40 Million Credit Card Numbers Hacked

The WaPo reports that More than 40 million credit card numbers belonging to U.S. consumers were accessed by a computer hacker and are at risk of being used for fraud, MasterCard International Inc. said yesterday.

A security breach of customer information at CardSystems Solutions Inc., a credit card transaction company, could expose to fraud up to 40 million cardholders of multiple brands, MasterCard International Inc. said Friday. The credit card giant said its security division detected multiple instances of fraud that tracked back to CardSystems Solutions Inc., which processes credit card and other payments for banks and merchants.


Visa spokeswoman said CardSystems did not comply with Visa's security rules when the breach occurred, though she would not elaborate on what went wrong.

The breach is the latest in a spate of such announcements from a variety of organizations, including banks and companies that buy and sell personal data, universities and government agencies. In some cases information was lost, in others stolen.

An entire industry has mushroomed during the past decade because of the ability of companies to gather and make sense of public records, criminal histories and other electronic details. What are they doing with it?


Dan Clements, chief executive of CardCops.com Inc., a privacy protection organization, said financial institutions lack any incentive to take more responsibility for breaches of sensitive personal data.

Not only do credit card companies and banks that issue cards bear no losses for fraudulent purchases, but banks charge merchants for reversing unauthorized charges.

"It's a revenue stream for them," Clements said


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Credit cards data theft is rising and rising. Awful! Why can't really strong safety measures be invented? I began to be afraid of using my credit card anywhere.

Opra said...

You see, credit cards are considered to be more secure than cash. However, there are cases when credit card data theft takes place. And it's awful:-(((