A not-for-profit company that sells educational materials for the National Park Service has mailed warnings to 15,000 customers, informing them that their personal information may have been stolen.
The company, Eastern National, said that a hacker infiltrated its computer system and may have gained access to customer names, credit card numbers and billing addresses.
The letters were mailed last week to all customers who bought products through eParks.com, the online bookstore of the National Park Service. It is not clear how many of the organization's customers were from California or the Bay Area.
Chesley Moroz, president of Eastern National, said that her Fort Washington, Pa., company discovered the security breach March 23 and immediately shut down its computer system. The system was turned back on two days later after extra safety measures were added.
Moroz said that the security breach lasted several hours.
"To our knowledge, none of the information was used for identity theft," Moroz said. She added that it's not clear whether the hacker even got access to personal data.
Eastern National's computer break-in is the latest in a string of potential cases of stolen personal data. Wells Fargo, ChoicePoint, UC Berkeley and UCSF have all had personal information of their customers or students stolen or potentially compromised.