By now, you may have received an email from one of the larger businesses you've given your email address to saying that due to their marketing provider being breached, hackers have your email address. A marketing company, Epsilon, had customer names and email addresses stolen. There are quite a few clients who use Epsilon's services and as companies begin sending out the notices, we're beginning to see who. If you're interested in an up-to-date list, one has been kept up here.

I'm not going to bet that every company that did business with Epsilon will be so kind to notify its customers. Privacy experts are worried about targeted attacks because of the nature of the information provided. So what does this mean? It means that if you receive an email from some organization you do business with asking you to confirm your information or verify your password or anything of that sort, don't click any links in the email. Instead, open up your web browser and go directly to the business' site and check things out there.

Now I'm the paranoid sort and I'd say that if you receive any email for a while, even those from companies that make a business marketing via email, don't click on any links. Companies that offer special discount codes should hopefully publish them in the email and allow you to redeem them manually. Ones that offer printable coupons and the like should take you to a webpage where you can verify the URL. Hopefully it's an HTTPS connection, meaning you can check the certificate. If the certificate is showing as in error, don't trust the page.