No payment, login, or other private user data accessed
Annapolis, MD; October 14, 2026—On October 2, the Entomological Society of America was notified by one of its third-party vendors of a data breach in which contact information for past ESA event attendees was accessed and downloaded by an unauthorized party.
The data accessed was contact information that attendees and exhibitors at ESA's 2021 and 2022 Annual Meetings provided when logging in to use the "Eventscribe" mobile app, hosted by Cadmium: name, email, organization, position, city, state, country, phone number, and profile information such as biography and social media links.
No payment info, account passwords, or other private user information was accessed, nor was any data housed in any ESA-owned systems. Cadmium is a provider of event management software, which ESA has used for managing abstract submissions, conference programs, and speaker and attendee lists for several years, as well as for the Annual Meeting mobile app in 2021 and 2022. Prior to this incident, ESA had already selected a new provider for these services beginning in 2027.
Only data from the 2021 and 2022 ESA Annual Meetings were accessed. The contact information involved was provided by speakers and attendees, most of whom opted to make that info visible via the conference mobile app attendee directory for other attendees to see. ESA requested a copy of the data accessed in the breach and confirmed it is limited to this contact information.
In response to the incident, Cadmium conducted an independent third-party investigation and enacted several corrective measures to ensure greater data security in its software. For more details about the data breach, visit https://notice.gocadmium.com.
ESA is committed to protecting the privacy and personal data of our members and customers. For more, see ESA's Privacy Policy.
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CONTACT: Joe Rominiecki, jrominiecki@entsoc.org, 301-731-4535 x3009
ABOUT: ESA is the largest organization in the world serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and people in related disciplines. Founded in 1889, ESA today has nearly 7,000 members affiliated with educational institutions, health agencies, private industry, and government. Headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland, the Society stands ready as a non-partisan scientific and educational resource for all insect-related topics. For more information, visit www.entsoc.org.