Thank You BufferApp for Being Open & Transparent

I am impressed by the folks at BufferApp.com.

Today they were hacked.

We’ve heard plenty of horror stories about privacy breaches resulting in identity theft and the like when a business or organization gets hacked, and yet rarely do they reach out to alert you.  It seems like they are usually trying to cover it up.

I happened to be online and saw tweets from a couple friends warning that Buffer was hacked, so I looked into it and they were right.

Buffer was on top of it, on a Saturday afternoon, using social media to get the word out.

And they also emailed their users:

Hi there,

I wanted to get in touch to apologize for the awful experience we’ve caused many of you on your weekend. Buffer was hacked around 1 hour ago, and many of you may have experienced spam posts sent from you via Buffer. I can only understand how angry and disappointed you must be right now.

Not everyone who has signed up for Buffer has been affected, but you may want to check on your accounts. We’re working hard to fix this problem right now and we’re expecting to have everything back to normal shortly.

We’re posting continual updates on the Buffer Facebook page and the Buffer Twitter page to keep you in the loop on everything.

The best steps for you to take right now and important information for you:

Remove any postings from your Facebook page or Twitter page that look like spam
Keep an eye on Buffer’s Twitter page and Facebook page
Your Buffer passwords are not affected
No billing or payment information was affected or exposed
All Facebook posts sent via Buffer have been temporarily hidden and will reappear once we’ve resolved this situation
I am incredibly sorry this has happened and affected you and your company. We’re working around the clock right now to get this resolved and we’ll continue to post updates on Facebook and Twitter.

If you have any questions at all, please respond to this email. Understandably, a lot of people have emailed us, so we might take a short while to get back to everyone, but we will respond to every single email.

– Joel and the Buffer team

Some companies use Buffer to schedule their social media posts and there are both free and paid accounts available.  I use it for my personal twitter account only.  I changed a couple passwords to be safe and will wait until Sunday to use Buffer again, but that’s just a minor inconvenience.