A lot of TripAdvisor users have received a somewhat alarming message from the company’s CEO advising that part of its e-mail list was compromised over the weekend.

The letter (text in full below) says that no passwords were revealed and that the site doesn’t collect credit card numbers, so the most any affected members might need to worry about is some new spam in their inboxes.

Here’s the e-mail from CEO Steve Kaufer:

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.

The company has also posted additional information about the incident on its website.

We just hope this doesn’t negatively impact the agritourists who want to book a room at Schrute Farms.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

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