Over the last few days I received a couple of emails from Ticketweb informing me that their email system was subject to unauthorised access, and that I may have received some unwarranted emails. The message went on to further explain that I should not follow the instructions to click the link and “Update Your PDF Application”, but delete the message.

Ticketweb were also keen to stress that none of my credit card details had been accessed, and the second message from them explained what I needed to do in the event that I had not seen their first email and gone ahead to fill in my card details as per the instruction of the first rogue email supposedly from Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Here are the two emails I received, first the one from Sunday, and secondly the one from yesterday:

While it’s bad that my email address fell into the hands of a malevolent third-party, it’s good to see that Ticketweb were quick to get on the case with informing their customers about what had happened and offered advice on how to deal with the situation. There was nothing in the email from ‘Adobe Acrobat Reader’ that linked back to Ticketweb, so they could very easily have kept quiet about what had happened, yet instead they were honest and proactive about trying to make amends.

It seems inevitable these days that if you are in the business of storing data online, then at some point there will be those who will try to steal it for their own purposes. At least Ticketweb were decent enough to hold their hands up and admit there had been a problem straight away, rather than waiting for the story to hit news and only issuing an apology and remedy as a result of public pressure.