Gyft Users Gifted a Data Breach; Change Passwords Immediately

Gyft is a company that allows people to buy, send, and manage gift cards from hundreds of retailers all over the country including a variety of top department stores and restaurants. Now it is also notifying users of its services, which include a mobile app, of a security incident which resulted in the unauthorized access of user names, addresses, birth dates, email addresses, phone numbers, and gift card numbers that were stored in Gyft accounts.

The breach occurred between October 3 and December 18, 2015 when the unknown party accessed the information stored with two of Gyft’s cloud providers. The company is also advising anyone who may have tried to use Gyft between March and December of last year that their login credentials may also have been compromised.

Affected users are being required to change passwords. However, it is recommended that all who have accounts with Gyft immediately go in and change passwords. When doing so, ensure it is unique only to the one site and that it includes the following, at a minimum:

• Eight characters
• At least one number and one special character
• Upper and lower case letters

Also, avoid using easy to guess words and personally identifiable information (PII) such as birth date, social security number, home address, or anything that can be used for identity theft or fraud.

Even though payment card numbers are not maintained in the Gyft databases and the company has not found evidence that any of the accessed details have been misused, it is still important to monitor payment card charges for anything purchased on the Gyft site or mobile app. If anything looks unusual, report it to your financial institution right away. Also, check any gift card purchases made from cards managed in your Gyft account. Gyft is also recommending that anyone who has linked a Coinbase account to a Gyft account, review all of those transactions closely beginning in October of last year. That is because those accounts can be used to make purchases on Gyft.

For additional information, Gyft has set up a page on its website for those affected.