Are you concerned about credit card theft and/or hackers into your financial statements and accounts?

45.7 Million Customers' Card Data Stolen


AP


BOSTON (March 29) - More than two months after first disclosing that hackers accessed customers' financial data from its computers, discount retailer TJX Cos. has revealed that information from at least 45.7 million credit and debit cards was stolen over an 18-month period.





In a regulatory filing that gives the first detailed account of the breach initially disclosed in January, the owner of T.J. Maxx, Marshall's and other stores in North America and the United Kingdom also said another 455,000 customers who returned merchandise without receipts had their personal data stolen, including driver's license numbers.





The data that was stolen covers transactions dating as far back as December 2002, TJX said in the filing Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.





TJX spokeswoman Sherry Lang did not immediately return a telephone message from The Associated Press seeking comment late Wednesday.





But Lang told The Boston Globe, which first reported the filing Wednesday night, that about 75 percent of the compromised cards either were expired or had data from their magnetic stripes masked, meaning the data was stored as asterisks, rather than numbers.





Lang said the extent of the damage may never be known because of the methods used by the intruder. Much of the transaction data was deleted by TJX in the normal course of business between the time of the thefts and the time they were discovered, the filing said, making it impossible to know how many card numbers were obtained.





"There's a lot we may never know and it's one of the difficulties of this investigation," Lang said. "It's why this has taken this long and why it's been so tedious. It's painstaking."





Avivah Litan, vice president of research and advisory company Gartner Inc., told the Globe the TJX breach is "the biggest card heist ever."





"This was obviously done over a long period of time, in many locations," she said. "It's done considerable damage."|||Yes!|||No I'm not. Thank you.|||I think its a concern we all have. You have to be careful what you do. Even when you are on line at the store with the card in hand..people can see and remember the number..or when you throw out receipts and statements, you must shred or rip up and scatter the trash in different bags....too much agony.


I am in banking and I see and hear about it all the time.|||If you need to protect your personal and financial information or want more help with identity theft check out http://identitytheftnow.com|||Yes Yes Yes, Definitely. We all should be in today's world of computer's. Who know's how the people are who work for major corp's and place's that hold our financial record's and such. I have had my debit info stolen and went threw h*ll trying to get that straightened out. We all should check our report's periodically and keep track or our record's and statement's really closely. As much as companies try to keep up with security is as much a the theives keep up with hacking into a companies security. We are all at risk I would say. Well unless you have bad and crapy credit and it's no use to a thief. Ha Ha