Press Room

An inadvertent data breach took place affecting Springer Nature America Inc freelancers and vendors, including those at Scientific American, who received a 2017 1099 IRS Tax form. The data breach occurred in the royalties department and was a result of human error and not of hacking or other foul play. In error, a file was sent to a freelancer containing information including names, addresses and social security numbers of other recipients of this tax form. The freelancer who received the file in error was contacted and has confirmed the immediate deletion of all the data included in the file.

Scientific American and Springer Nature America Inc take matters of data breach very seriously. A letter has been sent individually to all of those affected to notify them of the data breach. Furthermore, to give assurance we are taking the additional precaution of providing the impacted individuals with two years of free identity protection and credit monitoring support, through a 3rd party provider.

Internally, we will implement additional data protection training to prevent against this happening again. 

Scientific American’s legal entity is Springer Nature America Inc. It is part of Springer Nature.

About Scientific American

Founded in 1845, Scientific American is the oldest continuously published magazine in the US and the leading authoritative publication for science and technology in the general media. Together with scientificamerican.com and 14 local language editions around the world it reaches more than nine million readers. Other titles include Scientific American Mind and Spektrum der Wissenschaft in Germany. Scientific American is published by Springer Nature, a leading global research, educational and professional publisher, home to an array of respected and trusted brands providing quality content through a range of innovative products and services. Springer Nature was formed in 2015 through the merger of Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, Macmillan Education and Springer Science+Business Media.