Gale security incident and what it means for Library users
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Gale/Cengage, a publisher of several databases to which the Library subscribes, including theandGale Primary Sources, recentlyof their systems. According to their web site, “there is no indication that any of the information exposed in this incident has been used inappropriately as the sites only collected names and email addresses. There is no evidence that other information was impacted.”
When using any Gale product from the Library’s web site, no personal information is transmitted to Gale. This publisher would only have a user’s name and email address if that user proactivelyprovided thatinformation to Gale, for example, when creating an account on the Gale site to save search results or other work in one of their databases for later access.
users may be affected by this breach, but it should be limited to users who actively provided their name and email through a Gale product, and only the name and email provided (which might or might not be a address) would have been exposed if the user was affected.Users whose names and email addresses were exposed are receiving individual emailsdirectly from Galewith the subject line “Notification Regarding Gale Security Incident.”
There area number ofsteps you can take to protect your personal information online:
- Set up strong passwords unique to each account following these guidelines:
- Add additional protection to your account by enabling two-factor authentication:/2fa/
- Take advantage of 's free cybersecurity training:/it/channels/news/cybersecurity-sitcom
If you have any concerns or questions about this, please don't hesitate to contact web.library [at] mcgill.ca