Don't auction this: eBay drops the security ball

Stop me if you've heard this story before: a big company reports being hacked, and millions of consumers are now at risk.

Surprised? Not so much.

This time, it's eBay's turn. The online auction company yesterday announced that hackers had broken into its systems sometime between late February and early March (nothing like a precise date, no?) and gained access to 145 million records.

A company spokesperson says the intruders copied "a large part" of that data, but could not confirm precisely how many users were affected. The records included email addresses, birthdays, mailing addresses and other personal data. They also included passwords, but the spokesperson said they were encrypted (all the other stuff was unencrypted.) You'll forgive me if I don't feel all warm and fuzzy here, as the company's reaction is, in a word, lame.

I ended up doing some pretty fascinating broadcast work around this story, including a visit to CTV London's studios that netted 5 interviews - 4 on this topic alone - by the time I was done there.

• CTV News Channel - interview with Marcia MacMillan
• CTV Toronto - reporter Colin Demelo (story page, with video, here)
• CTV Montreal - reporter Aphrodite Salas (video here)
• CTV London (newscast here, segment around the 27-minute mark)
• CTV National News - reporter John Vennavally-Rao (story page, with video, here, newscast here)

For funsies, this morning I was back at CTV London's studios for a live hit with Canada AM's Beverly Thomson (video here). Just before going to air, I did a phoner with John Moore on NewsTalk 1010 Toronto. The surreal journey continues, I guess. As long as I don't use eBay to unload my stuff.