Harrods has vowed not to engage with cyber criminals after hackers contacted the store in the wake of a major IT systems breach that may have exposed the details of 430,000 customers, the Daily Mail reported on Monday.
The luxury Knightsbridge department store warned on Friday that information including names and contact details was taken after one of its third-party provider systems was compromised.
“Our focus remains on informing and supporting our customers. We have informed all relevant authorities and will continue to co-operate with them,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
The majority of Harrods customers shop in-store, so it is understood the breach has affected only a small proportion of its shoppers.
Harrods did not elaborate on what the hackers had communicated to the company.
The stolen data included basic personal information, including names and contact details if they had been provided.
Some information relating to marketing preferences, loyalty cards and tie-ins to other companies was also taken, including Harrods co-branded cards, the company's spokesperson said, who added “this information is unlikely to be interpreted accurately by an unauthorized third party.”
He said, “We would like to reiterate that no payment details or order history information has been accessed and the impacted personal data remains limited to basic personal identifiers as advised previously.”
This week's data breach was not connected to attempts to hack into other Harrods systems earlier this year, the spokesperson added.
