SACRAMENTO, CA - A day after Anonymous hacked into California Statewide Law Enforcement Association's website, CSLEA members are still learning about the security breach.
Plus, the CSLEA homepage is still down.
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The well-known international hacking group released the names, home addresses, and phone numbers of public safety professionals, many of them police officers. It also exposed credit card information on purchases made in their online gift shop.
Anonymous claimed on their post that they have 2,500 names and passwords, and in some cases, credit card numbers.
The hacker group justified releasing the information asserting, "California law enforcement officers are notorious for brutality."
Union president Alan Barcelona said CSLEA had information taken in November. All members who had their information breached then were contacted by phone or letter. The letter, dated Nov. 10, "confirms that credit card information of customers of the CSLEA online store had been compromised"
It stated, "Fortunately, most of the credit cards that were compromised had expired." And, it went on to state, "Additionally, all of the information which was previously maintained on the site has been purged."
Teresa Dobbins, an employee of the Department of Justice, never got word of the breach in November. And she wasn't informed that her personal information, including her email address, phone number, and home address, were leaked onto the web New Year's Day, until News 10 contacted her.
"If they were aware of it, they should have tried to notify me before the media did," Dobbins said.
"I feel so violated...I really do because that is personal information," said Dobbins. "It's way unnerving because all these people have your info and they know you are part of law enforcement. It makes you vulnerable."
Retired police officer and CSLEA member Lonnie Paynter of Citrus Heights did receive the letter in November warning him of the security breach.
"I'm really concerned about that," Paynter said. "We try to be as low key as we can being in law enforcement."
Fortunately, his home address posted online is three years old and he has moved since then. His credit card information posted is now expired.
Monday afternoon, the CSLEA president said that staff had not notified members that had their information posted by Anonymous on New Year's Day. He also said the union's website remained down so security experts could determine if there were other information breaches.
CSLEA represents more than 7,000 public safety employees working for the state of California.
By Suzanne Phan, sphan@news10.net
Twtitter: @suzannephan
News10/KXTV