Fraud Due to a Credit Card Breach
This sort of story is nothing new:
Hannaford said credit and debit card numbers were stolen during the card authorization process and about 4.2 million unique account numbers were exposed.
But it’s rare that we see statistics about the actual risk of fraud:
The company is aware of about 1,800 cases of fraud reported so far relating to the breach.
And this is interesting:
“Visa and MasterCard have stipulated in their contracts with retailers that they will not divulge who the source is when a data breach occurs,” Spitzer said. “We’ve been engaged in a dialogue for a couple years now about changing this rule…. Without knowing who the retailer is that caused the breach, it’s hard for banks to conduct a good investigation on behalf of their consumers. And it’s a problem for consumers as well, because if they know which retailer is responsible, they can rule themselves out for being at risk if they don’t shop at that retailer.”
Jd Bertron • March 21, 2008 7:32 AM
I just went through the same hassle with my bank. They won’t tell me (can’t tell me) who authorized a transaction for $0.00.
I thought Visa/MC only authenticated the transaction, not the buyer. But why be so secretive about the merchant’s identity ?