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Credit cards compromised

An estimated 100 million credit/debit cards have been affected in what may be the largest compromise ever.

What happened

Heartland Payment Systems Inc., a New Jersey-based credit card processor, announced Tuesday that computer hackers had gained access to their processing network during 2008 and had stolen customer information for about 100 million credit and debit cards. HPS processes transactions for more than 250,000 businesses nationwide.

The United States Secret Service and the Department of Justice are investigating the situation, but HPS reports that no merchant data, cardholder Social Security numbers, unencrypted person identification numbers (PIN), addresses or telephone numbers were involved in the compromise.

This is believed to be the largest credit/debit card compromise ever. Prior to this week’s news, the largest known breach occurred in 2005 and 2006 when 45 million card numbers were stolen from retail company TJX, which owns the TJMaxx and Marshalls store chains.

How this affects you

Card-holders are advised to examine their monthly statements closely and to report any suspicious activity to their card issuers. It is not necessary for card-holders to call their local banks to determine whether their card was compromised or not — it is the responsibility of the card-issuers to contact their affected customers. A card-holder is not responsible for any fraudulent charges.

Smaller banks typically will call their card-holders to notify them of a breach, will automatically close affected accounts and will order new cards. Generally, larger banks will send out letters notifying their customers that their card was compromised and will ask that they be contacted if the card-holder notices anything wrong with their account, but won’t take any automatic action.

HPS said they believe the intrusion has been contained.
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