Indie Label Conglomerate Beggars Group Hacked
Beggars Group – the conglomerate that houses indie labels like XL, Rough Trade and Matador – announced that their online stores’ data were breached during the last year. The group warned customers that credit card information, email, home address and date of birth may be at risk.
Artists under the Beggars umbrella include Adele, Radiohead, Jack White, Vampire Weekend, Queens of the Stone Age, Pavement, Grimes, the xx, Kurt Vile, Savages and many more. Although XL’s current roster has both Adele and, recently, Radiohead, those artists were not affected by the breach, Pitchfork reports. Adele is distributed through Columbia in the U.S., while XL had not yet acquired Radiohead’s back catalog at the time of the hack.
Matador Direct, Beggars’ U.S. distributor, revealed the hack in a letter to customers that detailed the time period in which the hack likely occurred and what data was comprised. “In May 4, 2016, we were advised by our third-party website developer that it had identified and removed suspicious files from the e-commerce websites of the record labels for which Matador Direct is the distributor,” Matador president Patrick Amory wrote.
“We quickly began an investigation and hired a third-party cybersecurity firm to assist us. Findings from the investigation show that if a customer attempted to or did place an order on one of the affected websites from April 28, 2015 to May 4, 2016, information associated with the order being placed, including the customer’s name, address, phone number, email address, payment card number, expiration date and security code (CVV), and account password for the website on which the customer placed an order, may have been obtained by an unauthorized third-party.”
Matador Direct did not specify how many customers were potentially affected by the breach. As a result of the hack, the company has changed all of its customers’ log-in passwords and is working towards improving their online security.
Customers who have questions regarding the breach “may contact our dedicated call center at (877) 218-0056, Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. EST and provide reference number 7631070716 when calling,” Matador Direct said in a statement.