Santa Clara, Calif. — Walmart’s video-on-demand streaming service Vudu notified registered users this week that thieves had broken into its offices and made off with hard drives and equipment containing some customer data.
Vudu said the theft occurred last month and included hard drives containing sensitive customer information, including names and addresses, birth dates, email addresses and account activity.
Some credit card information was also involved, but Vudu said the full credit card numbers were not stored on the stolen drives. Only the last four digits of some cards were involved. Also taken were some encrypted Vudu account passwords.
Vudu said the personal account data was heavily encrypted and unlikely to be broken and exposed, but suggested that users reset their passwords just to be safe.
Also, only customers who access Vudu directly through Vudu.com are affected.
Vudu said it is proactively retiring and resetting all passwords and notifying all customers.
“If you had a password set on the Vudu site, we have taken the precaution of expiring and resetting that password. To create a new password, go to Vudu.com. Click the ‘Sign In’ button at the top of the page. Enter your current username and current password when prompted, then follow the instructions to reset your password securely. Also, if you use your expired Vudu password on any other sites, we strongly recommend that you change it on those sites as well,” Vudu said in a statement to users.
The company said it is also making available to customers AllClear ID identity-protection services.
