McDonald's Hack Compromises Thousands of People's Personal Information

McDonald's recently announced that its McDonald's Canada career website was recently subjected to a cyber-attack that has potentially compromised the personal information of tens of thousands of job applicants.

The popular quick service chain said that the information of approximately 95,000 applicants have been affected by the breach. Applicants whose personal information is at risk include those who applied online for a job at a McDonald's Canada restaurant between March 2014 and March 2017.

McDonald's said the personal information compromised is limited to applicant name, address, email address, phone number, employment background and other standard application information.

Fortunately, the chain's application forms do not request highly sensitive personal information such as social insurance numbers, banking information or health information (which is normal for a standard job application, but might still be of some comfort to people worried about their privacy in the wake of the hack).

"When we learned of this privacy breach we immediately shut down the site and launched an investigation," McDonald's said in a statement. "The careers webpage will remain shut down until the investigation is complete and appropriate measures are taken to ensure that this type of security breach does not happen again."

The brand says that while the investigation is being carried out, all affected applicants will be notified by a letter in the mail (or by phone or email if they did not provide a home address).

McDonald's says there is currently no indication that the information taken has been misused.

The chain apologized for the incident and advised prospective job seekers to apply for a position in person at any McDonald's Canada restaurant.

Applicants who are concerned about being impacted can call the brand's dedicated assistance line at 1-877-238-3790 or click here to learn more.