Epsilon, a marketing vendor used by Barclays Bank of Delaware to send emails to customers, announced someone "outside their company" gained unauthorized access to files in their systems that included a large number of email addresses.  "This has affected many of our credit cards under various co-brands" reads an email sent by Barclays Bank of Delaware representatives on Sunday, April 3rd, 2011.

"Epsilon has assured us that the only information that was obtained was your name and email address. Please be assured your account and any other confidential or personally identifiable information were not at risk." the email continued.

"It is possible you may receive spam email messages as a result which could potentially ask you for additional information about your account. Please note, Barclays will never ask you in an email to verify sensitive information such as your full account number, Username, Password or Social Security Number. Therefore, any email which does so should be treated suspiciously, even if it looks like it comes from Barclays. As a reminder, we urge you to be cautious when opening links or attachments from unknown third parties." continued.

Barclays is one of many companies affected and so you may receive similar notifications from other companies.

Spokepeople for Barclays said,"We sincerely regret this has taken place and for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Barclays is committed to protecting customers against the misuse of their personal information and we take security issues very seriously. We vigorously monitor the security of our systems and require all third party vendors to adhere to strict security and privacy policies and procedures."

[This release was posted by staff of PRSafe and resulted from an email sent to a cardholder]