Online fund-raising site Kickstarter hacked
17 Feb 2014
Kickstarter, the online fund-raising site used by millions of people to raise capital for creative projects and businesses, said it had repaired a security breach that allowed hackers gain access to some of its customers' data.
Yancey Strickler, co-founder of the site said in a blog post that hackers had accessed usernames, email addresses, phone numbers and passwords and it was recommended that users change their passwords.
Kickstarter is one of dozens of crowdfunding websites that allow people to raise money from donors for projects, and among the campaigns are a Long Island brewery, arts projects and business startups.
According to Strickler, though the site was hacked last week, the breach had been repaired.
He said though the hackers got some passwords, phone numbers and email addresses, ''no credit card data of any kind was accessed.''
"We're incredibly sorry that this happened," Strickler wrote in his blogpost. "We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting. We have since improved our security procedures and systems in numerous ways.
"As a precaution, we strongly recommend that you create a new password for your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password."
Founded five years ago, Kickstarter has collected $982 million for over 56,000 projects, according to its website.
According to the company it had collected pledges from over 5.6 million people.
