Bad news shoppers, if you have been shopping at Target you might want to call up your bank and request for a new credit card because according to the company, they have recently experienced a security breach in which they estimate about 40 million credit and debit card numbers have been stolen during the first three weeks of the holiday season. This makes it the second largest breach ever to be reported by a US retailer. Target claims that the operation in which the card numbers were stolen was done over the course of 19 days, starting just before Thanksgiving all the way until recently where they were notified of the breach.
As it stands Target is currently working with law enforcement officials and outside experts to prevent similar attacks from happening in the future, as well as trying to determine how its systems were compromised in the first place. Given that this was done right smack in the holiday season, the timing couldn’t be worse as not only did it undermine the confidence of shoppers who would have shopped at Target, but leaving some with a mess that they would have to sort out during the festive season.
While MasterCard and Visa officials did not have anything to say, American Express stated that they were aware of the incident and have since put fraud controls into place. So if you have shopped at Target recently, like we said, you might want to call your bank and ask for a new card just to be on the safe side.