[UPDATE: According to GameStop's Customer Care team this information "was part of a test and not genuine customer data. Full story HERE. Original story continues below.]As it is every year, several consumers took advantage of Black Friday deals to find items, such as games, from retailers like Walmart, Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, and others on the cheap, but it seems those who shopped at GameStop for Black Friday yesterday may want to double-check their information. Although GameStop has yet to officially comment on it, there are reports of customer information potentially being leaked out to other customers who were doing their shopping.Ultimately, it appears to be a glitch in GameStop's user database, where shoppers were inadvertently opening up and/or refreshing their information and seeing names, orders, addressees, and potentially even credit card information for other GameStop users. It doesn't necessarily seem to be widespread, but there are a handful of users reporting this online. This appears to happen with every refresh, when checking order statuses, and other avenues on the site. It includes multiple carts, phone numbers, addresses, and so on, and it does appear that enough have been impacted so that GameStop will no doubt look into it closely. However, as pointed out by Twitter news and deal aggregate account Wario64, it's not a bad idea for anyone to remove their credit card info from GameStop's database for the time being. Given the serious nature of this leak, it is something that GameStop will hopefully fix ASAP, but it's also something to keep in mind.
After all, Black Friday is followed up by Cyber Monday. More and more retailers start Black Friday deals early, as well as offer their deals online as well as in brick-and-mortar stores, so some may be done shopping. Cyber Monday deals are likely to be very similar to Black Friday, but only online, meaning those unaware may unintentionally find their information spread all the same.
Those who believe in the good in mankind may find themselves closing out of these accounts and trying to get into theirs properly, but there's no doubt many could take advantage of this data breach. Ergo, it may be wise to be mindful of this for the rest of the shopping season, not just at GameStop but potentially all online databases and retailers. To be clear, it only seems to be reports on GameStop at this time, but personal online security is no joke.