By Simon Thiel
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Monster Worldwide Inc., the operator of the most-used jobs Web site, said hackers may have stolen confidential details of users in more than one country after the Times reported the data of 4.5 million U.K. users was accessed.
Monster hasn’t established which countries were affected, Michelle Brown, a company spokeswoman in London, said via phone today. So far, the New York-based company knows that “our database was accessed and that contact and account data was taken, including user IDs, passwords, e-mail addresses, names, phone numbers and some basic demographic data,” she said.
Hackers stole data of users of the Monster.co.uk site in the U.K., the London-based newspaper reported today, citing the company. Monster doesn’t know yet whether U.K. users have been affected, Brown said today, adding that the company has 4.5 million registered users in the country.
Monster is working with the “appropriate law enforcement authorities,” Brown said. She declined to say in which countries the company is working with the authorities.
The hackers didn’t access resumes of Monster users, according to a Jan. 23 notice on the company’s sites. Monster also generally doesn’t collect “sensitive data” such as Social Security numbers or personal financial data, and no such information was accessed, according to the notice from Patrick Manzo, the company’s global chief privacy officer.
Users may be required to change their passwords, he wrote.
Monster operates in 36 countries and has 5,200 employees, according to its corporate Web site. The company’s stock has fallen 64 percent in the past year on the New York Stock Exchange, giving Monster a market value of $1.2 billion.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Thiel in London at sthiel1@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: January 27, 2009 05:39 EST
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