Credit Cards Compromised

[Bestwifeever]

From the CEO...."We take this crime seriously. It was a crime against Target, our team members, and most importantly, our guests. We’re in this together, and in that spirit, we are extending a 10% discount – the same amount our team members receive – to guests who shop in U.S. stores on Dec. 21 and 22."

Obviously no mention of a discount on everything, but it would have fooled me.

Full Text: A Message from CEO Gregg Steinhafel about Target

Me too. I like Target but the discount should have covered everything in a shopping trip. So the company would have not made as much profit on those ipads or Dyson vacuums--only 2 days for the discount anyway. It would have had no impact on their profits and would have brought them so much good will. They really dropped the ball.

 

[Midpack]

From the CEO...."We take this crime seriously. It was a crime against Target, our team members, and most importantly, our guests. We’re in this together, and in that spirit, we are extending a 10% discount – the same amount our team members receive – to guests who shop in U.S. stores on Dec. 21 and 22."

Obviously no mention of a discount on everything, but it would have fooled me.

Full Text: A Message from CEO Gregg Steinhafel about Target

I acknowledged I probably would've been fooled too and that he led folks to believe it might be all. But these days it seems there's always "fine print," and of course there was in this case.

We've shopped at Target almost weekly for years (partial groceries), but we're also seriously reevaluating our alternatives after this credit mess. They've lost some of our business, if not all. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to shop at WalMart thanks to DW, so we're running out of options (K-Mart stores near us are awful).

 

[MRG]

Bad PR when they do not need any more. if that was an on purpose decision, it wasn't very smart.
MRG

 

[aja8888]

Bad PR when they do not need any more. if that was an on purpose decision, it wasn't very smart.
MRG

Yes, not a good way to appease the wounded...

Where we live, there are 7 super Walmart's within a 15 mile radius (shocking, no doubt) and maybe three Target stores. There was one K-Mart but it went under and a Hobby Lobby is there now. If one were to get disturbed at Target's operations, there are plenty of other choices nearby.

 

[AllDone]

Target has agreements with Apple, etc. about what they can charge. They aren't allowed to discount.

 

[MRG]

Target has agreements with Apple, etc. about what they can charge. They aren't allowed to discount.

OK, I could understand that. Still doesn't excuse the misinformation. They could have provided gift cards or some other form of compensation to those special deals.

About 8 years ago I'd read a Harvard Business Journal article on great or not so great public apologies. J&J got great cudos for the Tylenol issue, Mr. Clinton did as well. One of the keys to success was a perceived earnest apology. History is the best judge. Anybody buying puts on TGT?
MRG

 

[JoeWras]

Something has to change. Chips will help, but they can do so much more. We all need to demand better from our banks and retailers. They keep saying "they'll cover the liability", but it is a pain in the donkey for everyone to unwind it when it happens.

I don't have a debit card because of this and probably never will.

I work in an associated industry for Megacorp, so I'm very familiar with "firmware upgrades." I find it mind boggling that some systems still don't have a secure way to do this. 10 years ago I worked on a project to do this for our firmware. Our firmware is embedded so deeply I could not fathom why we even need it. However, my eyes were opened as we all took courses to act like a hacker. If a hacker can get their foot into a device that has millions of transactions, they can sell the information for pennies to the launderers and still make a fortune.

OK, I need to stop blabbing. Much of this can be stopped, but there is so much short-sightedness it is driving me crazy.

Hey, I want to thank everyone here for mentioning "alerts". I deal with my father's finances and have now added alerts. The volume is low for his accounts, so any activity raises an eyebrow. These alerts are really helpful. I knew about them, but needed the prodding from the discussion here to use them more widely.

 

[Chuckanut]

According to the article I read a Card from the Bank of Nova Scotia can be sold for over $80 by these stolen card web sites. An ordinary card such as mine is probably worth less than half of that.

What has me wondering is that the Canadians now use chipped cards, so do they get old fashioned,obsolete, insecure magnetic strip cards when they visit the USA? Or do their cards have both? (Most likely considering how many Canadians cross the border to buy our cheap gasoline and Trader Joe's products.)

We owe it to our friends up North, to improve our credit card security. Some of these border towns would go bust if the Canadians stop shopping in them.

 

[Bestwifeever]

Target has agreements with Apple, etc. about what they can charge. They aren't allowed to discount.

They could probably have given a gift card instead as Apple itself did on black Friday. And surely someone at Apple would have overridden that agreement for one weekend.

 

[MichaelB]

Checking Mom's bank account this morning and saw this. Not a problem for her or us, as we don't use debit cards, but this might be a real inconvenience for travelers that left a week agoand planned on using the debit card.
.
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[Bestwifeever]

According to the article I read a Card from the Bank of Nova Scotia can be sold for over $80 by these stolen card web sites. An ordinary card such as mine is probably worth less than half of that.

What has me wondering is that the Canadians now use chipped cards, so do they get old fashioned,obsolete, insecure magnetic strip cards when they visit the USA? Or do their cards have both? ....

I am not Canadian but I have a chipped American Express Blue card that has always had both (we first got it in 1999). I never got a pin for the chip. I even had a smart card reader that came standard in an older laptop (because everyone was going to do all their shopping from their laptop, I guess), so I wonder if there was some planned US conversion to the chip system that fell apart with the whole dot com collapse.

 

[aja8888]

I am not Canadian but I have a chipped American Express Blue card that has always had both (we first got it in 1999). I never got a pin for the chip. I even had a smart card reader that came standard in an older laptop (because everyone was going to do all their shopping from their laptop, I guess), so I wonder if there was some planned US conversion to the chip system that fell apart with the whole dot com collapse.

My chipped AMEX Blue got hacked while in Puerto Rico at a check in at the Grand Hyatt in San Juan. The scanner was remote (according to AMEX rep) and the next day my card was in Croatia being ripped for over $18,000. The only time I used the card was at check in at the hotel. According to AMEX, a new card was made within 12 hours.

 

[Rustward]

While Chip and Pin is more secure than the mag stripe, I am not sure it is the panacea. Vulnerabilities with Chip and Pin have been documented. The criminals usually go after the softest targets (no pun intended) and mag stripe is easier for them to defeat than Chip and Pin is. But after the whole world is on Chip and Pin, the criminals will have incentive to defeat Chip and Pin, and it can be done -- it just takes more effort.

It will be an ongoing task to stay ahead of the fraudsters.

BBC - Newsnight: Susan Watts: New flaws in chip and pin system revealed

You can google yes-card.

Debit cards:

 

[Chuckanut]

FYI, I just heard that the cost of replacing all the credit cards compromised in the Target breach was about 400 Million dollars.

 

[TrvlBug]

Just received a robo call yesterday from AmEx...they are sending replacement cards due to a compromise. This is the 4th replacement since the Target breach a year ago...arghhh. AmEx is my go to card for the 2% cash back and used almost everywhere, although I don't recall a recent breach. IIRC, 3 replacements due to compromise and one due to some type of theft. They caught it when I used the card at my local grocery store and someone else within a few hours in a store across the country. AmEx appears to be very vigilant in their fraud detection .