Usually the lack of response is because an official response hasn’t yet been approved by the legal department, and then signed off by the board. These things take longer than modern journalism takes to publish an article.

I wonder how little time "immediate" means though. They probably have an overwhelming amount of incoming - from journalists, security service providers, and opportunist scammers posing as both of those groups among other things.

Notice the word “immediately” in that statement.

The journalists were in a rush to publish breaking news. They weren’t going to wait for a response.

This is just a CYA statement to say that they sent a message to the company to do their job but, quite literally, did not immediately get a response.

You probably found out before they did

Why do you have an app installed just to buy clothes

I've seen comments from people claiming they used to work at Asos saying that they have a Braze/Snowflake integration, and the push notification was sent from Braze

It's a BBC article for a British retailer. I reckon the knowledge was reasonably assumed for the intended audience.

Second paragraph mentions that it's a "clothing and beauty store".

It’s extremely well known in the UK which is the intended audience, although even here older readers might not have heard of it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_blocking

For others its a huge online fashion retailer in the UK (and maybe elsewhere?).

Maybe the hackers were trying to do us a favor?