RSSCredit Card ID Theft Affects 180,000
By Ed Oswald | Published April 14, 2005, 10:00 AM
180,000 individuals that used their MasterCard credit cards at Polo Ralph Lauren stores are being informed that they may have had their personal information compromised, British bank HSBC revealed on Wednesday. In particular, the theft seems to be limited to those carrying GM-branded MasterCards.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the theft occurred last month. Other banks may have been affected by the security breach, however none have stepped forward publicly. Laws as they are currently written do not make it mandatory for banks to immediately alert customers to fraud.
A letter sent to HSBC cardholders said, "A national retailer's computer system has had a security breach and your credit card account number may be among those that were compromised."
The latest admission of data loss is sure to turn heads in Washington. Several lawmakers have indicated that they plan to take action to ensure that such wide-scale identity theft cases do not occur in the future. Lawmakers such as California Senator Diane Feinstein have proposed to enact a federal law similar to a two-year-old California law on identity theft.
The California law requires that companies inform their clients as soon as information is compromised. However, Feinstein would also like to make the law applicable federally to encrypted and paper records.
It's simple. Don't keep credit card info on file. After you've bought something online and the process is accepted and funds transferred, destory the card info. Simple. Your card info is in a computer for a few hours, if not a few days. But wait...online stores want to collect more information, more info, what color is your underwear?, what's your sexual preference?...just because you can store it doesn't mean you should. And for those of you thinking about re-occurring transactions, why don't you just pay a few times up front (you may even get a discount, hint hint to vendors.) Problem solved, except for those few who are in the system while it's compromised, but it should be fewer than 180,000.
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I second that. After the card has been processed it should be removed form the database and never seen again unless it is being used again by the customer. The companies should be sued for storing this info with out consent. I would never allow a company to retain my CC info. How stupid that would be.
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Its bad enough that credit card numbers etc may have been compromised (Bank jargon for stolen) but to then sit on the information and not tell their customers is totally out of order.
Wonder who'll be picking up the bills for the stolen money?
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It's readily apparent our fed and state gov't is too slow to enact legislation to punish companies that lose our vital personal information. I plan on cancelling my cards (credit) at this rate due to the complete lack of trust I have for companies keeping my information private.
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I am going to be a lot more careful of who I hand my credit card too.
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Too much scare-mongering over there, I tells ya! What's really been stolen? Numbers with a name attached to them, not a whole lot more. Unless you guys have some sort of 'smart-card' CC I don't think there's a whole lot to be worried about. Worst comes to worst, you'll have to ring your bank and say that there has been some illegal charges added to your card - nothing more. It's not like you won't get your money back anyway.
Would I be right in saying this? Or are credit cards an entirely different beast in the US?
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