What is Hot Topic?
The Queen’s IT Services Security team recently became aware of the following. In October 2024, retailer Hot Topic suffered a data breach that exposed 57 million unique email addresses. A listing of usernames, that included those of Queen's account holders, were shared with IT Services. As a precaution, Queen’s IT Services will expire the passwords of any Queen’s account found to be listed on the breached accounts list to ensure that the password posted will no longer be valid.


What should I do to protect myself?
If you received an email message from IT Services concerning the expiry of your password, please take a moment to change your password before it expires. NetID passwords are changed at https://netid.queensu.ca/selfservice/login/auth


We also encourage you to take the following actions to better protect yourself and your information:
Do not reuse passwords across your accounts.
If you have used your Queen’s password on multiple sites, we strongly encourage you to change that password on every other site where it has been used.
Be extra diligent of scams that may reference your Queen's account.


What data was compromised?
According to reports, dates of birth, Email addresses, genders, names, partial credit card data, phone numbers, physical addresses, purchases, salutations were included in the breach. The impacted data also included partial credit data containing card type, expiry and last 4 digits. See below on how to review what services may be tied to your email address via the service called 'Have I been Pwned?"


Why is Queen’s expiring passwords for potentially breached accounts?
Queen’s account holders who fail to follow safe password practices are at risk when breaches like this occur. To protect your Queen’s account IT Services are taking this action to prevent account compromises by ensuring all accounts associated with the posting of credentials have refreshed passwords.


What caused the data breach?
It is not known to us as to the exact cause of this data breach. IT Services received this breach information from the service called “Have I Been Pwned?”. Visiting the website https://haveibeenpwned.com/ will allow you to enter and check your Queen’s University email address against all publicized breaches that reference your Queen’s email address. The site also provides details about the data breach, including links to additional information.