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March 4, 2009 7:06 PM PST

Spotify's latest music dirge: We've been hacked

by Charles Cooper
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Hackers were able to penetrate Spotify's computer network, potentially exposing the personal information and passwords of some of the music service's users.

In a company blog announcement, Spotify did not get specific about the extent of the breach. Here's part of the post:

Along with passwords, registration information such as your email address, birth date, gender, postal code and billing receipt details were potentially exposed. Credit card numbers are not stored by us and were not at risk. All payment data is handled by a secure 3rd party provider.

If you have an account that was created on or before December 19, 2008, we strongly suggest that you change your password and strongly encourage you to change your passwords for any other services where you use the same password.

The company, based in Europe, was not immediately available for comment so it was unclear how many of its users were affected or to what extent. But in an article published by Britain's Guardian, the newspaper's technology correspondent reported that "thousands of users' personal details may have been stolen by hackers."

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About Coop's Corner

Charles Cooper has covered technology and business for more than 25 years. A graduate of Queens College and Columbia University, Cooper received the Excellence in Journalism award from the Northern California branch of the Society for Professional Journalists for column writing.

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