The publisher informed the Attorney General's office that an employee at its Florida Customer Fulfilment center may have misused the payment card information provided by some of its customers. "The employee has now been terminated and we worked with law enforcement authorities on the matter", the company said.

The customers gave their payment card information to the employee to pay for magazine subscriptions, Time Inc said. However, only one Time subscriber resident in New Hampshire was potentially affected by the issue, it added.

As required under US law, customers will be given a free credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies, Time Inc said.

Time Inc's parent, Time Warner, has suffered its own reported security breaches in the past. In 2005, it exposed the records of 600 000 current and former employees, after backup tapes that it had entrusted to Iron Mountain were lost. The names and social security details of employees dating back to 1986 had been lost.

Then in 2007, records affecting Time Warner were stolen, along with those affecting other companies, from the offices of Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson). The records were contained on five laptops at the Manhattan offices of Perrin, which served as a pensions consulting firm to Time Warner and other clients.