Confidential Information May Have Been Compromised After Beggars Group Web Stores Are Hacked

Beggars Group has just revealed that their online stores have been hacked.  The group’s U.S distributor, Matador Direct, said in a letter that customers who placed orders through the websites for Matador Direct-distributed labels from April 28, 2015 to May 4, 2016 might have been the victims of the data breach. Credit card numbers were possibly exposed to hackers.  However, the number of accounts potentially affected has not been released.

Beggars Group is the conglomerate of many labels including True Panther, XL Recordings, Rough Trade, Matador, Young Turks, 4AD, and Beggars Arkive.  Adele, Radiohead, Vampire Weekend, The XX, St. Vincent, Pavement, Interpol, Cat Power, and Queens of the Stone Age are some of the many artists that have released records on Beggars Group labels.  Albums by Adele and Radiohead were not affected by the breach.

President and co-owner of Matador, Patrick Amory, wrote in a letter on July 15 “On May 4, 2016, we were advised by our third-party website developer that it had identified and removed suspicious files from the e-commerce websites of the record labels for which Matador Direct is the distributor,” he added “We quickly began an investigation and hired a third-party cybersecurity firm to assist us. Findings from the investigation show that if a customer attempted to or did place an order on one of the affected websites from April 28, 2016 to May 4, 2016, information associated with the order being placed, including the customer’s name, address, phone number, email address, payment card number, expiration date and security code (CVV), and account password for the website on which the customer placed an order, may have been obtained by an unauthorized third-party.”

A spokesperson for Beggars told Pitchfork “Matador Direct identified and addressed a data security incident that potentially affected orders placed or attempted to be placed from April 28, 2015 to May 4, 2016 on the e-commerce sites operated by Matador Direct. Customers who have questions may contact our dedicated call center at (877) 218-0056, Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. EST and provide reference number 7631070716 when calling.”