Hundreds of Brits' details exposed in claimed Amazon UK hack

A hacker has posted purported data on more than 600 Amazon UK customers online, but the retailer has said the information does not come from their systems.

The data, posted on Saturday to Pastebin, was presented by a hacker named Darwinaire as proof that he or she broke into the online retailer's systems. It covers names, usernames, registration dates, phone numbers, email addresses and home addresses for 635 people. It also includes some passwords in plain text.

The details appear to be valid, going by a random sample checked out by ZDNet. However, not all were able to confirm that the data is linked to an Amazon UK account, saying the information is old.

The retailer said on Sunday that there had been no security breach at the company.

"There has been no compromise of Amazon's systems, and this is not information from our database," a spokesman for the company said via email.

Even though valid customer details have been leaked, this does not definitely mean they came from Amazon UK's database. They could have been obtained by combining information from a range of sources, as in the hack of Wired journalist Ed Honan, or via a breach of a third party.