The Target stores credit card breach

Quick look revealed no thread about this.

I have been moderately inconvenienced -- my data was stolen, but I've seen no indication it's been used. But my bank replaced my card, my PIN (which I've had for 20 years) and now I'm having to replace my master password in dozens of locations. Did I say moderately? I meant holy-crap-what-a-pain-in-the-ass.

But at least I've received a year of credit protection from Experian. Or at least I think I have -- I jumped through Target's hoops, was approved, signed up at Experian this morning and now the website has crashed. And I've been on hold with them for 20 minutes. Not a good sign.

Target has long been my go-to place for home sundries. That's about to change.

Anyone else impacted?

 

I shop at Target, literally, every day.

That said, I'll act upon this when I see some indication that my information has been used, and probably not before.

The chances are just too small that I'll be victimized compared to the inconvenience of jumping through hoops over it.

 

My new debit card just arrived in the mail yesterday. I now have to figure out all the services I use with my credit card on file and change them. Uggh.

 

This is why identity theft should be a capital crime. The inconvenience and destruction it wreaks on individual lives is off the charts, and there's little recourse for the victims. IF they're tracked down and caught, which is almost never, it's often treated as little more than simple theft. Meanwhile, the victims can spend years unraveling the damage.
The scumbags who perpetrate this crime should be thrown into a slow-spinning wood chipper.

 

Time to reorder checks, I guess.

 

Or have Target give everyone affected a 100 dollar gift card.

 

The last story I read, I thought they had traced this to Russia.

 

And Eastern Europe is hacker/identity theft central. Part of why it's so hard to do anything about it, legally. The domestic cases are hard enough to trace through the byzantine maze of the internet. Once you cross a border it's damn near impossible. It'd take a coordinated international effort to truly stamp it out -- similar to what was done with pirates in the 1600s and 1700s -- and that's not likely to happen. I don't think other countries are as affected by this, and none of them (ours included) give enough of a damn to spend the resources necessary to make that level of effort. They'll crack cases and investigate where they can, but the penalties for the crime are nowhere near heavy enough to discourage it. It's a million dollar, low-risk crime that, at worst, you spend a few years in jail for. For most criminals heading down that road, it's not only worth the risk, it's easier and more profitable than having the keys to a bank vault.

 

I graduated from law school, but never practiced. When people ask me what I learned in law school, I tell them, "never use a debit card for anything but the ATM." Even when you use your debit card at an ATM, make sure to look for evidence that the machine has been compromised. This advice is so cut and dry I still managed to learned it in a class taught by the hands-down worst teacher/professor I've ever had.

I can't explain how dumb it is to use your debit card for every day purchases. Get a credit card and use it exclusively!

http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/20/pf/expert/debit-credit-cards/

 

I'm convinced.

I usually use the card as a debit, because I feel guilty that the store has to pay the 1-3% fee to the card company. Stupid, I know.

Now, I really know.

Plus, most places these days, if you're charging under $25, you don't have to sign and it's just as quick as an ATM.

 

They traced the malware to a 17-year-old in Russia.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/20/us/money-target-breach

 

A friend of mine, a sportswriter, had his information taken and used. They ran up $4500 on random charges from around the country and outside of the country. They're going to be reimbursed, but he said they had to spend hours and hours on the phone to get it fixed.

We have the Target card and we're canceling it and in the process of changing all of our banking information.