14 DAY TRIAL // News International has begun notifying The Sun customers that their personal information might have been exposed during a cyber attack against the company's network two weeks ago.
On July 19, the notorious hacker group LulzSec hijacked the The Sun website and redirected visitors to a fake article about News International boss Rupert Murdoch being dead.
In addition, the hacktivists also claimed to have obtained the newspaper's email archive and other data from the site's database.
It seems that information in LulzSec's possession includes customer details from competitions and polls organized by The Sun and its parent company.
The hackers have already begun publishing the stolen data. "We will begin today be presenting to you, various files obtained from The Sun, a company within the News Corp group," they wrote on July 30.
"We will continue, then, by exposing the world for what it is; a less than perfect place where we cannot trust those who we ask to protect our information," they added.
In an email sent to customers on Monday, News International's customer data director, Chris Duncan informed them of the potential data breach.
"As you may be aware on July 19th The Sun website was subject to an organised criminal attack. It has now come to our attention that some customer information from competitions and polls was breached as part of this attack," he wrote.
The exposed details include names, addresses, dates of birth, email addresses and phone numbers, but can vary from customer to customer. However, Duncan stressed that no financial data or passwords have been compromised in the attack.
The official pointed out that the police and the Information Commissioner's Office have been notified of the incident and advised users to take extra precautions when contacted by unknown third parties.