Scholastic suffers data breach exposing 8 million people, report says

Millions of records on people including addresses, emails, names and phone numbers were stolen at a data breach at publishing giant Scholastic. (c) ConsumerAffairs

Hacker says the theft was intended to serve as a lesson

Scholastic, a giant publisher of textbooks and Harry Potter, has reportedly suffered a data breach exposing records on millions of people. But for now, it appears the stolen data won't be made public or sold.

The hack happened in January and stole around 8 million entries include emails, home addresses, names and phone numbers, but not every entry includes all that information, news website The Daily Dot reported on Friday.

More than 4.2 million emails were exposed in the breach and education clients account for around 1.05 million of the roughly 8 million entries, according to The Daily Dot.

The hacker, named "Parasocial," showed the data to The Daily Dot, which the hacker said they acquired after an employee's computer was infected with malware.

Parasocial told The Daily Dot they don't plan to make the information public but for the hack to serve as a warning about Scholastic's poor security.

Scholastic didn't immediately respond to ConsumerAffairs's request for comment.

Last week, Scholastic told The Daily Dot it was investigating.

“Scholastic takes the security of our customers’ data seriously with extensive systems and protocols, and are investigating this claim thoroughly,” the company said.