DATA BREACH POTENTIALLY INVOLVING MILLIONS OF DEBIT AND CREDIT CARDS

Once again, another large scale breach of plastic cards by criminals intent on compromising credit and debit cardholder data has occurred, and this may be the biggest one on record.  In this breach, a large card processor, (this is a company that processes transactions for retail stores), had an intrusion into their software that allowed access to card transactions and critical information that allowed criminals to create counterfeit cards and use them throughout the United States.   In response to this breach, banks and credit unions are reissuing cards to customers who may have had their cards compromised.  In January 2007, TJ Maxx and Marshalls Department Stores had a security breach into their systems which resulted in millions of debit and credit cardholders throughout the United States being exposed to potential fraud and identity theft problems.  To protect cardholders, financial institutions notified their cardholders and reissued new cards to them, at great expense to the financial institutions and great inconvenience to the cardholders. 
 
What can you do to protect yourself from these criminals?  Sometimes, you can take every precaution in the world to protect your identity, then some retail chain or card processor either is not monitoring their confidential information appropriately or the criminals find a way to crack into their systems. 

 

Consumers need to be aware of fraudulent e-mails allegedly from the Federal Reserve Bank.  The fraudulent e-mails claim that a phishing attack has affected the Fedwire system and that restrictions are in place.  The e-mails further instruct recipients to click on links within the e-mail for additional information.  The fraudulent e-mails have included various spoofed names and addresses in the "From;" line of the messages, including "Bank System Administration," "System Administration", and "Federal Reserve Bank."  The e-mails contain the following message verbatim:
 
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK
 
Important:
 
You're getting this letter in connection with new directives issued by U.S. Treasury Department.  The directives concern U.S. Federal Wire online payments.  On January 1, 2009 a large-scaled phishing attack started and has been still lasting.  A great number of banks and credit unions is affected by this attack and quantity of illegal wire transfers has reached an extremely high level.  U.S. Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in common worked out a complex of immediate actions for the highest possible reduction of fraudulent operations.  We regret to inform you that definite restrictions will be applied to all Federal Wire transfers from January 6 till January 16.  Here you can get more detailed information regarding the affected banks and U.S. Treasury Department restrictions:
 
The message contains links to two Web pages that attempt to load malicious Trojan horse programs onto end users' computers.  If you have become a victim of this fraud you should immediately do a full scan of your computer using updated anti-virus software.