Update: We spoke with Doug Terfehr this afternoon after he read this piece. Doug isn’t a bad person — he’s just enduring a particularly rough spell at work.
Fans of pizza should check their email to see if there’s a message from Pizza Hut.
Pizza Hut has confirmed to multiple outlets that people who placed online orders on Oct. 1 and 2 could be among as many as 60,000 individuals affected by a “temporary security intrusion” that exposed personal details, including payment card information.
In a notice sent to impacted customers on Oct. 14, Pizza Hut said the incident affected under 1% of that week’s visits to its site.
The email, images of which can be found on Twitter, explains Pizza Hut moved to halt the intrusion as soon as it was discovered and took steps to avoid additional issues.
“For your safety, we encourage you to be particularly alert for email, phone, and postal mail scams requesting any personal data, including sensitive details,” the message states.
Pizza Hut’s Response Leaves Something to Be Desired
When contacted for verification about the breach, here’s the response we received from Pizza Hut — from a staffer named Doug.
I assume you’ve done the research to see that it took nearly six weeks for Equifax to notify customers about their security intrusion? And Yahoo!’s was more than 3 years. Wendy’s, Popeye’s, Chipotle also far longer than 2 weeks like Pizza Hut. We moved very swiftly. Why it takes any company some time to notify customers if that you want to make sure that you are notifying the right companies. That no one is left off or that you aren’t unintentionally alarming a customer who it turns out was not affected. Here’s a good article with more background: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/09/08/why-it-can-take-so-long-for-companies-to-reveal-their-data-breaches/?utm_term=.bba3f59a2b52Also, Equifax, for instance, impacted 143MM customers. Pizza Hut was less than 60,000. Just don’t want to cause too much fear given any person who was impacted received an email from the company and a postal letter will arrive soon.
Doug’s tone suggests he’s grown weary of questions about the incident.
He did not give a surname in the reply, but the comments seem to come from Doug Terfehr, Pizza Hut’s communications lead. Other reports note Terfehr issued statements emphasizing the protection of customer privacy and apologizing for the trouble.
The email to affected customers states they are eligible for one year of complimentary credit monitoring through Kroll Information Assurance.
If you’re trying to tighten up your household budget while you sort through concerns like this, consider joining a pantry challenge to make better use of what you already have and cut unnecessary spending.
Jordan Mills is a senior writer and producer at Savinly.
