TripAdvisor today announced that last weekend they have found vulnerabilities in their systems and an unauthorized third party had managed to steal part of their member email list.

Below the notification letter from the Steve Kaufer, Co-founder and CEO, which appeared this morning via eblasts to their database:

To our travel community:

This past weekend we discovered that an unauthorized third party had stolen part of TripAdvisor's member email list.

We've confirmed the source of the vulnerability and shut it down. We're taking this incident very seriously and are actively pursuing the matter with law enforcement.

How will this affect you? In many cases, it won't. Only a portion of all member email addresses were taken, and all member passwords remain secure. You may receive some unsolicited emails (spam) as a result of this incident.

The reason we are going directly to you with this news is that we think it's the right thing to do. As a TripAdvisor member, I would want to know. Unfortunately, this sort of data theft is becoming more common across many industries, and we take it extremely seriously.

I'd also like to reassure you that TripAdvisor does not collect members' credit card or financial information, and we never sell or rent our member list.

We will continue to take all appropriate measures to keep your personal information secure at TripAdvisor. I sincerely apologize for this incident and appreciate your membership in our travel community.

Steve Kaufer
Co-founder and CEO

For more information from the company, follow the link below:

www.tripadvisor.com/vpages/more_information.html