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Disney Emails Among Those Hacked

MIAMI - (CBSMiami.com) - A security breach at a major email management firm this week recently caused numerous companies to disclose to customers that their names and emails had been stolen.

 Among the companies targeted was Disney, which mailed out emails on Sunday warning customers of the security breach. 

"We regret that this incident has occurred and any inconvenience this incident may cause you," Disney wrote in an email to affected customers. "As a result, you should be extremely cautious before opening links or attachments from unknown third parties or providing a credit card number or other sensitive information in response to any email."

The email did not say how many names and email addresses had been compromised, however, the problem emerged after Epsilon, the company that manages email communications for Tivo, JP Morgan Chase, Capital One Financial, US Bank and Kroger grocery chain, made clients aware that it had suffered a security breach. 

Each year, Epsilon sends out 40 billion emails and released a statement on March 30th saying it had detected "clients' customer data were exposed by an unauthorized entry into Epsilon's email system." 

In its statement, the company also pledged to launch a "full investigation."

Several companies have already taken steps to make their customers aware of the breach including TiVo, Kroger, Chase and Capital One. The banks said the only data that appears to have been stolen were email addresses and not financial data.

(©2011 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. CNET contributed to this report.)

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