TORONTO - The unauthorized access of names and addresses of hundreds of thousands of Honda Canada customers could open them up to a variety of scams, security experts say.

Tom Keenan, a computer security expert and professor at the University of Calgary, said the breach is bad, but not as bad as others recently since it did not include information such as credit card numbers.

"It all goes into a kind of identity theft possibility because if you know enough about a person who might be able to establish enough credentials to start credit in their name," he said.

Keenan said names and addresses can easily be obtained in lots of other places such as telephone directories. But he noted that there are many ways thieves could use such information, for example by trying to scam Honda owners with fake service deals.

"You have to assume somebody didn't do this just for the hell of it," he said.

Honda Canada says it has informed more than 280,000 customers of its Honda and Acura brands that some of their personal information may have been stolen when its computer systems accessed.

The company said the information taken was related to a program in 2009 that encouraged customers to register at the myHonda website.

"We would like to sincerely apologize to our Canadian customers for this incident," the company said in a statement.

"Honda and Acura are working diligently to protect our customers' personal information and improve our data security procedures on an ongoing basis."

In an alert posted on Honda's website, the Japanese carmaker said details such as customer names, addresses, vehicle identification numbers and in some cases Honda Financial Services account numbers were accessed by hackers.

The company said the information didn't include data typically used for identity theft or fraud, such as birth dates, credit card numbers and bank account numbers.

Honda said customers should be alert to marketing campaigns from third parties that reference their ownership of a Honda, but otherwise recommended no other specific action.

"Honda does not share its customer information with unauthorized third parties and does not contact customers asking for financial information," the company said in its post to customers.

Richard Rosenberg, a professor emeritus at UBC and computer security expert, said the information accessed could be used to target Honda customers with tailored scams based on their Honda ownership.

"You could tell people that there is something wrong with their car that needs to be fixed, but before they bring it in, could they in good faith send you some money," Rosenberg said of one possible scam.

Honda said anyone with questions about the incident should call 1-800-839-2826.

The incident at Honda followed a number of hacker attacks at Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony in recent weeks, the most notable coming last month and affecting more than 100 million accounts of PlayStation Network and Qriocity users.

In that incident, data including names, birth dates, email addresses and log-in information was compromised. Sony also said encrypted credit card data from 10 million accounts may have been accessed.

Earlier this month, Canada's privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart called for the power to impose "attention-getting fines" when major corporations fail to protect personal information.