Time Warner Cable Inc. said Wednesday that as many as 320,000 customers may have had their email passwords stolen.
The company said email and password details were likely gathered either through malware downloaded during phishing attacks or indirectly through data breaches of other companies that stored Time Warner Cable’s customer information, including email addresses.
The company said it has not yet determined how the information was obtained, but there were no indications Time Warner Cable’s systems were breached.
The Augusta Police Department warned of the breach on its Facebook page Thursday, urging customers to reset passwords, especially for Roadrunner email accounts ending “@rr.com.”
“These customers will be contacted by the company with information about resetting their passwords,” the department wrote, adding users also should reset passwords for other online accounts if they were the same as the email password.
A Time Warner Cable spokesman said it recently was notified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that some customers’ email addresses including account passwords “may have been compromised.”
The company said it is sending emails and direct mail correspondence to encourage customers to update their email passwords as a precaution.
A company spokeswoman declined to disclose Thursday how many of the possibly compromised email accounts belonged to Maine residents.
Bangor Daily News writer Darren Fishell contributed to this report.