Recover Lost Documents

Document-sharing Web site Scribd removed a list of 700 Comcast customers’ usernames and passwords on March 16, two months after it was posted there.

Elinor Mills reported in her article for CNET News that Scribd removed the list after Brad Stone of The New York Times contacted them about what appeared to be a list of thousands of passwords and usernames on the site. Stone stated that he was contacted by a customer of Comcast who came across the list during a search of his own e-mail address on the Pipl search engine.

Jennifer Khoury, a Comcast spokeswoman, told The New York Times that the list was likely compiled from phishing or another related form of attack and did not originate from within Comcast.

Khoury stated that the company has contacted the customers whose data was exposed and that their e-mail accounts have been frozen.

A Comcast spokesman later stated that they removed the list on Scribd, which consisted of 8,000 names, but only about 700 were usernames of Comcast customers. The spokesman stated that the other names on the list were either not customers, duplicates, or older inactive accounts with no current e-mail addresses.