Ever hear of the company Certegy? Be frightened, very frightened.
Certegy provides check processing services to a HUGE number of retail operations throughout the United States, possibly credit card processing internationally. Wal Mart? Best Buy? Certegy customers.
They weren't hacked, they were robbed. A database administrator, which is what I do for a living, stole banking and credit card information from 2.3 million accounts, and SOLD THEM TO MARKETERS. It has since been found that a large number of people are experience a variety of problems ranging from identity theft to having their accounts plundered. Class action law suits are being formed even as we speak.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/070307-fidelity-national-records.html
I'm not personally concerned because of my current checking account, one has never been used at Best Buy or Walmart, one was opened in April which is after the data theft, and the other is being closed. But PLEASE order copies of your credit ratings and keep a VERY close eye on your bank statements! The article says that Certegy is "implementing a fraud watch associated with the stolen records, has also notified credit-reporting agencies TransUnion, Equifax and Experian of the incident, in addition to notifying Visa and MasterCard.", but based on feedback to the article, people are having to get the credit monitoring in place themselves and lots of banks, including Wells Fargo IIRC, do not know this is going on.
Here's one reply to the article, there's something like 45 of them:
"I decdided to call them to see if I was included in their database, and if so how I could remove myself. The person I talked to said that she needed by Driver's license number, my routing number, and my account number to even tell if I was in the Database. But she added that if I had ever written a check or used my debit card at Wal Mart, Bestbuy or 374,998 other businesses in the US, then I was definately in their database. I asked how to remove myself from the database, and she replied stop writing checks or using my debit card. I then asked that since I was probably already in their database, how can I get the information removed? She said I cannot, it is Certegy property.
I'll be talking about preventing something like this from a technical side on my other blog.
They weren't hacked, they were robbed. A database administrator, which is what I do for a living, stole banking and credit card information from 2.3 million accounts, and SOLD THEM TO MARKETERS. It has since been found that a large number of people are experience a variety of problems ranging from identity theft to having their accounts plundered. Class action law suits are being formed even as we speak.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/070307-fidelity-national-records.html
I'm not personally concerned because of my current checking account, one has never been used at Best Buy or Walmart, one was opened in April which is after the data theft, and the other is being closed. But PLEASE order copies of your credit ratings and keep a VERY close eye on your bank statements! The article says that Certegy is "implementing a fraud watch associated with the stolen records, has also notified credit-reporting agencies TransUnion, Equifax and Experian of the incident, in addition to notifying Visa and MasterCard.", but based on feedback to the article, people are having to get the credit monitoring in place themselves and lots of banks, including Wells Fargo IIRC, do not know this is going on.
Here's one reply to the article, there's something like 45 of them:
"I decdided to call them to see if I was included in their database, and if so how I could remove myself. The person I talked to said that she needed by Driver's license number, my routing number, and my account number to even tell if I was in the Database. But she added that if I had ever written a check or used my debit card at Wal Mart, Bestbuy or 374,998 other businesses in the US, then I was definately in their database. I asked how to remove myself from the database, and she replied stop writing checks or using my debit card. I then asked that since I was probably already in their database, how can I get the information removed? She said I cannot, it is Certegy property.
I'll be talking about preventing something like this from a technical side on my other blog.