The Canadian unit of McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD)’s has revealed that the personal information belonging to restaurant job applicants numbering 95,000 was compromised when the fast food chain’s careers website was hacked. Some of the information that was stolen includes phone numbers, candidates’ employment backgrounds, email addresses, addresses and names.
The candidates whose information was compromised put in their applications in a three-year period ranging between the March of 2014 and the March of 2017. All the job applicants who were affected in the online security breach will be notified by McDonald’s by physical mail. If the applicants didn’t provide a mailing address, they will be notified via a telephone call or an email. The fast food giant has also set up a dedicated hotline for the affected job applicants.
Complete shutdown
Once it became clear that the careers website had been hacked, McDonald’s shut it down. The website will remain out of operation until the ongoing investigations have been completed. Consequently, those who are interested in applying for a job at McDonald’s should do so by visiting any of the fast food chain’s outlets in person.
On whether the stolen information had been misused, the fast food chain said that no such evidence had appeared to show that was the case.
“At this time, we have no information that the information taken has been misused,” said the fast food giant.
No sensitive data stolen
The Canadian unit of the fast food chain also clarified that the job application forms did not require sensitive data such as health, banking or social insurance numbers to be filled. Additionally, the restaurant has notified privacy commissioners at the territorial, provincial and national levels concerning the online security breach.
This is not the first time that McDonald’s is having to deal with a cyber-attack in the recent past. Earlier in March this year, the fast food chain disclosed that its Twitter account had been compromised following an incident in which a tweet critical of President Donald Trump was posted from the handle.
On Friday shares of McDonald’s Corporation rose by 0.22% to close the day at $129.61.