San Francisco, Oct 3 (EFE).– A group of hackers that calls itself README dumped on the Internet the personal data of more than 2 million users of the San Francisco-based Patreon crowdfunding Web site, the company reported Saturday.

The crowdfunding site, founded in 2013 by musician Jack Conte and digital developer Sam Yam, collects funds from donors to help artists finance their projects.

Conte said Saturday in a statement that the company is working closely with the authorities to determine how the hackers accessed users’ data.

“We are being meticulous and rigorous in the investigation, and based on conversations with dozens of advisors and security experts, I’m highly confident that we’re doing everything in our power to minimize the impact on our users,” said Patreon cofounder and CEO Conte, who recommended that users of the site change their e-mail passwords as soon as possible.

Patreon announced last Wednesday that a group of hackers had accessed confidential data of the site’s users, but the incident was taken a step further with the dumping of every user’s personal information on the Internet.

Conte said, whatever had happened, that the non-authorized access to the company’s database was incapable of stealing credit card information.

“We do not store full credit card numbers on our servers and no credit card numbers were compromised,” the chief executive said on the company’s blog.

Security expert Troy Hunt said in a statement to the specialized publication Ars Technica that the data published online appear to be genuine. EFE