VerticalScope hacked, forum users’ data stolen

VerticalScope, the owner/operator of many motorcycle forums as well as Motorcycle.com, has been hacked, with customer information stolen.

Although their name isn’t at the tip of most motorcyclist’s tongues, VerticalScope is a major player in the online world. In the two-wheeled world, their best-known virtual property is Motorcycle.com, but they also own many motorcycle-specific forums (GoldWingOwners.com, SVRider.com, K1600Forum.com, Gixxer.com, etc.– see a list here). If you’re a DIY enthusiast, or just someone who likes to chat motorcycles with other owners online, there’s a chance you’ve come across one of their websites.

Now, the company (partially owned by Torstar, the Toronto Star’s publisher) has announced they were hacked back in February, and the data of millions of users was stolen.

While that sounds scary, VerticalScope believes the data breach was limited to user names, user IDs, email addresses, IP addresses, and encrypted passwords. Users were unable to make purchases over the sites, so their credit card information was not required or stored by VerticalScope. In other words, if you weren’t using the same password to log on to more than one website, it might not be a big deal for most users.  VerticalScope does say they are making changes to their password restrictions on their forums, to ensure users’ data is kept secure in the future.