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My mattress is looking more and more lumpy as the days go by.

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January 18, 2008 10:23 PM

They sold people on debit cards and increased credit card use because it was dangerous to carry cash. If you carried cash you would get mugged or your purse stolen.

Carrying cash is starting to look safer. Even if you don't end up personally out the money having your card reissued is a total PITA. I incurred some financial problems (mostly late fees) and about 10 hours of my time tracking down what bill pays I had set up under my old card number and canceling them. Not to mention the embarrassment of having my card declined, that's how I found out my card had been reissued. So glad I didn't discover this while on a trip or something.

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SJActress

January 18, 2008 10:27 PM

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GE Money Bank reported that over 650,000 customers of JC Penney and hundreds of other retail stores is missing.

Customers are MISSING?! How did they track THAT?!

Ahem, I believe you mean DATA of over 650,000 customers.

Thanks for the post, though. Good read.

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youbastid

January 18, 2008 10:30 PM

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@bohemian: So you'd rather just lose the money outright than to have to spend 10 hours getting it back?

I still feel safer with a debit card. If I get mugged, or lose my wallet (more likely), I'll never get the cash back. If my check card info gets stolen, I get everything back. All it takes is the due diligence to check your account online every couple days.

Fearing actual identity theft is another thing, but there's no amount of cash in a mattress that will keep you totally safe from that.

PS - If you don't want to deal with re-doing all the bill pays every time you have to replace your card, link the payee to your checking account. That number stays the same.

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mantari

January 18, 2008 10:34 PM

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Strange... Chris Walters was just telling us a similar tale about stolen account information.

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varco

January 18, 2008 10:55 PM

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I recently had my check cards changed for 2 different accounts. They sent us new ones with 2011 expiration dates a few months ago, but the old ones were good until 2009 so we kept them. Then they were suddenly canceled the old ones a couple of days ago with no warning.

When I went in to get new cards, there were some other people getting new cards too, so I think it was a credit union-wide thing. I wonder if it is a security matter (we've also had a lot of local credit union-related phishing going on recently).

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Mapmaker

January 18, 2008 11:43 PM

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Given how common identify theft seems to be nowadays, maybe there's been a second, unannounced batch of stolen numbers. Or hell, three or four.

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3drage

January 18, 2008 11:48 PM

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California attempted to pass an assembly bill that would require retail stores to erase PII from their unsecured and primitive computer systems. Good ol Arnie and his retail buddies vetoed the law after it was passed by an overwhelming majority. Now your identity is in peril. I wonder who should be held accountable for it?

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brian25

January 19, 2008 3:30 AM

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It is against PCI Data Standards to store PinBlock, CVV, CVC2, Track1, or Track2 data from credit/debit cards. There is no reason for them to store the PinBlock data as it does not offer the customer extra convenience nor allow looking up old receipts via credit card numbers, which is what many retailers do (which I hope is in a SHA-256 hash at least).

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mmmcookie

January 19, 2008 6:28 AM

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Now I know if I buy boring mid-western style clothing. My credit card # will be stolen. No to self no more \"mom\" jeans.

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oldnumberseven

January 19, 2008 9:48 AM

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It is comical to me that the crime is called identity theft when it seems in many cases the bank, credit card company, retail store, etc... seem just happy to lose the data, or give it away. That should be a crime as well. The idiot that took all the records home on their laptop, the brain dead clerk who got socially engineered, a few of those chaps should be stuck fined, or in jail as well.

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Mr. Gunn

January 19, 2008 6:21 PM

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Lots of downplaying of this news lately.

The headline news is choosing to run with the ever-compelling \"man closes himself, except he really didn't, but theoretically could have, maybe, but that wasn't really the objective anyways\".

Local news had \"11 year old boy robs pizza delivery guy\".

Does no one in the media have any fucking balls anymore?

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Silversmok3

January 19, 2008 9:23 PM

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The technology \"was created in such a manner to make unauthorized access extremely unlikely and difficult, even for experts with specialized knowledge and technology.\"

All these 'experts' need are functional legs and hands to grab the tapes,copy them,and walk out the door.
Assuming that the crooks copied the data tapes ,since GE Money Bank still has the master copies ,they wouldn't even know they got hit until people's money started dissapearing.

And their spin doctors make it seem like magnetic tape is 'secure'. Crazy.

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