Atari fail.
This arrived in my inbox yesterday:
December 2010? And it took until April 2012 to tell impacted customers? *sigh*.
Atari recently learned of a potential security violation in connection with the unauthorized access to Cryptic Studios’ user databases that occurred in December 2010. At that time, Atari owned Cryptic and the intrusion may have affected users on Atari’s databases as well and, therefore, we are taking proactive measures to correct the issue. This includes notifying certain users who are registered on Atari.com and TDU2.com (Test Drive Unlimited 2).As a precaution, on Atari.com and TDU2.com, we have reset all accounts for users which we believe were affected. This will require you to reset your password upon attempting to log into each site separately to regain access to your account. To do so, please refer to our website at http://atari.com/pages/cryptic-studios-security-notice-atari-websites for detailed instructions and more information about this issue.If the existing user name and password was used to access other online accounts, we highly recommend that you update those passwords as well.We take the security of our user accounts very seriously and are investigating this issue further with Cryptic Studios. Please note that this was not an intrusion on our existing database, but one that occurred prior to our divestment of Cryptic Studios in July of 2011. Cryptic no longer manages Atari’s databases. Our deepest apologies for the inconvenience.Atari
Look at what else occurred between the breach and the notification:
- "Arab Spring" uprisings oust leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya,
- Southern Sudan became an independent republic.
- The earthquake/tsunami and reactor meltdown in Fukushima, Japan
- British Royal Wedding
- Osama Bin Laden killed by US special forces
- End of the US Space shuttle program
- European economic crisis
- Severe flooding in Thailand and Fiji
- The entire 'occupy' movement
- Encyclopaedia Britannica stops hard-copy publication
- Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Falk, Whitney Houston, the King of Tonga and Randy "Macho Man" Savage all died.