Play.com calms security fears

The CEO of online retail Play.com has moved to clam any worried customers following the recent security breach that has hit the firm.

It was reported yesterday morning that the retailer has suffered an unspecified technical glitch that had resulted in a number of customers receiving spam email.

However, a statement released by John Perkins insists that all bank account and credit card information remains uncompromised:

"On Sunday March 20th some customers reported receiving a spam email to email addresses they only use for Play.com. We reacted immediately by informing all our customers of this potential security breach in order for them to take the necessary precautionary steps.

"We believe this issue may be related to some irregular activity that was identified in December 2010 at our email service provider, Silverpop. Investigations at the time showed no evidence that any of our customer email addresses had been downloaded.

"We would like to assure all our customers that the only information communicated to our email service provider was email addresses. Play.com has taken all the necessary steps with Silverpop to ensure a security breach of this nature does not happen again.

"We would also like to reassure our customers that all other personal information (i.e. credit cards, addresses, passwords, etc.) are kept in the very secure Play.com environment. Play.com has one of the most stringent internal standards of e-commerce security in the industry. This is audited and tested several times a year by leading internet security companies to ensure this high level of security is maintained.

"On behalf of Play.com, I would like to once again apologise to our customers for any inconvenience due to a potential increase in spam that may be caused by this issue."