Balenciaga, Gucci, and Alexander McQueen data leaks make me grateful for my VPN

Some Balenciaga, Gucci, and Alexander McQueen customers have had their data exposed in a cyber breach that occurred in April of this year. A hacker, or hackers, with the handle 'Shiny Hunters' claim to have stolen around 7.4 million unique email addresses, and I can't help but feel grateful for my VPN whenever this happens.

The fashion brands are all owned by Kering, which has publicly confirmed the breach after notifying all the customers who were affected. While we don't know exactly how many records were stolen, the data comprises customer names, email addresses, and phone numbers, along with physical addresses. Thankfully, this didn't include financial data like credit cards or bank details.

According to the BBC, which viewed a sample of the data, these records include purchase data and show that some customers spent over $10,000 in one go, with the largest purchase being $86,000. Cyber criminals use this information to identify which customers are the most affluent, making them potential targets for future attacks.

Many of the best VPN services include notifications that let you know about data breaches related to your accounts, giving you the chance to take precautions to prevent anyone from using that data to access your profiles on other sites.

While a VPN isn't going to stop your data from being stolen, it can act as a sort of fire alarm. If your account data from one website has been leaked in a data breach, then you should immediately change your passwords, add two-factor authentication, and take every possible step to protect all of your accounts. Since a lot of VPNs can scan the dark web to see whether your data has appeared in any data breaches, they enable you to take immediate precautions if it happens.

Our chosen VPN partner is NordVPN, and we recommend using it if you're worried about internet privacy. Besides being a fast and efficient way to access the internet from other countries, it also has a dark web monitor for data breaches.

Of course, VPNs have lots of other benefits too, and you can read our Minecraft VPN or Warzone VPN guides to get an idea of what they can do for you. Our best gaming VPN list also offers an overview of services like Proton VPN, Surfshark, CyberGhost, ExpressVPN, and NordVPN.