Kickstarter crowdfunding website hacked

Companies are facing a rising number of cyber attacks

Online crowdfunding website Kickstarter has said that hackers obtained some of its customers' data.

The site was hacked earlier last week, but the breach has been repaired, chief executive Yancey Strickler said.

The hackers got some passwords, phone numbers and email addresses, but "no credit card data of any kind was accessed," he said.

Kickstarter is one the leading online fundraising sites that lets people raise money from donors for projects.

"We're incredibly sorry that this happened," Mr Strickler wrote in a blogpost. "We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting. We have since improved our security procedures and systems in numerous ways.

"As a precaution, we strongly recommend that you create a new password for your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password."

He added that the company is "working closely with law enforcement".

People with Kickstarter accounts are being urged to change their passwords.

Kickstarter was founded five years ago and has collected $982m (£586m) for more than 56,000 projects, according to its website. It says it has collected pledges from more than 5.6 million people.