Nexus Mods Waits Over a Month to Let Users in on Security Breach
Nexus Mods recently suffered a data breach, and it took them over a month to inform their customers that they could have been at risk. | Credit: II.studio/Shutterstock.com
- Modding site Nexus Mods suffered from a data breach last month.
- The company only informed their users of the breach yesterday, Dec 19.
- This long wait could have left customers at risk of further breaches, which is unacceptable.
Data breaches happen. It’s an unfortunate fact that these days we have to be extremely careful about who we trust with our data. If we’re lucky, all of the companies we log data with can be trusted to keep it safe. Except, that’s very rarely the case. As it turns out, Nexus Mods can now be added to the list of unsafe companies.
It’s not that they allowed a breach to happen. Again – it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to be 100% safe from data breaches. The problem is that this breach occurred back in early November, and Nexus Mods only reported it to their users yesterday (Dec. 19) .
Nexus Mods Had a Responsibility to Their Users
When a data breach occurs, how the company responds is very important. When Heartland Payment Systems was targeted by hackers back in 2009, they responded immediately. As well as sealing the breach, they focused heavily on informing their customers and educating them about this sort of data breach , which was pretty rare back in the late 2000s.
Having a modern, internet-focused company such as Nexus Mods respond so slowly when they were breached is ridiculous. In this day and age, data breaches are unfortunately common. There is no way that they should have sat on this information for as long as they did.
Not only did it potentially leave their users vulnerable to other hacking attempts aimed at their e-mails or other associated accounts, but it also did nothing to promote confidence in a website that has nearly 19 million users. Nexus Mods had a responsibility to the customers that trusted them, and frankly, they failed those users in a big way.
Data Breaches are Serious Issues
Our data is more precious than ever. That’s why companies like Facebook and Amazon try so hard to get it. More than being precious, it is valuable. Mining data on people can earn big money online. More than that, our data can be used to target important individuals.
Finding yourself on the receiving end of a data breach is never fun. At least if you find out about it quickly, you can try to minimize the damage. It is never a good thing when a company would rather go into PR spin mode rather than put their users and customers first.
If this Nexus Mods breach has taught us anything, it’s that even a seemingly good company can leave much to be desired when it comes to putting their customers first. If Nexus Mods hope to learn anything, they should probably try thinking about the users who trusted them first, instead of themselves.
