Well. It hasn’t been the greatest year for everybody’s favorite two-weekend music festival has it? First, reports emerged that the owner of the world famous event was an anti-gay, climate change denier. Then, Beyonce — who was headlining the festival for the first time ever in her lauded career — was forced to drop out of the 2017 event completely after doctors recommended she rest instead of performing a complicated set while about to give birth to twins. The Bey Hive wasn’t overjoyed about that development, even though it was pretty predictable based on her estimated pregnancy timeline.
Things got better briefly on Tuesday when Coachella announced that Lady Gaga would be replacing Beyonce as the headliner, then got immediately worse…
…with the announcement that the festival’s website had been hacked and user data was compromised in the breach. In a statement, an AEG representative (which owns Coachella) confirmed the incident and said,
“We recently discovered that unauthorized third parties illegally gained access to the usernames, first and last names, shipping addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth individuals provided to Coachella,” an email to account holders reads. “We have confirmed that no user passwords were stolen.”
Well, as long as no payment data was stolen that’s good since nothing shady could possibly be accomplished with personal data like dates of birth, full names, or shipping addresses! Very comforting.
The company also promised festival attendees that they had increased security so this doesn’t happen in the future. Which isn’t the most comforting to people who may have just had some potentially compromising personal data stolen by hackers who are selling it on the dark web or use it in unethical ways, but at least the barn door is shut tightly now that all the horses are enjoying some light field grazing.
(via Pitchfork)
