Target Credit Card Processing Breach – Your personal accounts could be at risk

There is a chance that your credit or checking account could be at risk. There was a Target Credit Card Processing Breach that started on Thanksgiving Day and lasted until December 15th.

If you shopped in store at Target from 11/28/13-12/15/13, you will want to watch your accounts and statements very carefully for activity you don’t recognize and report it immediately.

According to sources at two different top 10 credit card issuers, the breach extends to nearly all Target locations nationwide, and involves the theft of data stored on the magnetic stripe of cards used at the stores.

The type of data stolen — also known as “track data” — allows crooks to create counterfeit cards by encoding the information onto any card with a magnetic stripe. If the thieves also were able to intercept PIN data for debit transactions, they would theoretically be able to reproduce stolen debit cards and use them to withdraw cash from ATMs. (Source: Krebs on Security – Read more about the report there.)

Again, this is ONLY if you shopped in store. Online data is not at risk. This is BIG you guys, there are already reports of people seeing fraudulent activity and if it comes about that debit and pin transactions were intercepted to then people stand to lose a lot more. Typically transactions that are processed as “credit” with a signature can be fought and reversed through the credit card company, but the same protections are not there for debit cards and people will lose anything that is obtained that way.

(Thanks I am That Lady!)