What should you do?

Did you get the ASOS 'hacked' notification? If so, there are a few important things that you shouldn't do, including clicking the Telegram link in the message. You should also:

• Avoid clicking links in any suspicious emails
• Do not click links in any suspicious texts or messages

Other cybercriminals could try to exploit the hysteria caused by the ASOS notification, so you should be particularly wary of emails telling you your account has been compromised, or asking you to reset your password.

It's also wise to be careful about shopping on ASOS until the company comments publicly on the issue, which hasn't happened yet.

What did the alert say?

ASOS customers first reported receiving the push alert above on Tuesday morning at around 4.55am ET / 9.55am BST.

This coincided with a spike in reports on Downdetector. The message is addressed to ASOS' data protection officer (DPO) and IT team, but was sent to customers.

The 'Snowflake' the message refers to is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) that organizations use as a dedicated cloud environment to store, process, and analyze data. This is what has concerned security experts, although it's a little early to say whether customer data has been compromised.