Dell says the information was limited to customer names, email addresses and hashed (i.e. scrambled) passwords, and no other details, such as credit card information, were impacted. As soon as Dell detected the attempted hack, it deployed countermeasures, contacted authorities, recruited a digital forensics firm and reset all customer passwords. If you have a Dell.com account and used the same password elsewhere, you should consider changing it on those other services (and make sure you have a unique password for each one).

The company has declined to reveal the scope of the hack, however. "Since this is a voluntary disclosure, and there is no conclusive evidence that customer account information was extracted, it would be imprudent to publish potential numbers when there may be none," a spokesman told CNET.

The attempted hack follows recent data breaches at other prominent tech firms, including Facebook. Meanwhile, senators are in the process of drafting a federal privacy bill that could hold companies to account for such breaches should it be signed into law.