Shopped at Target this holiday season? Company breach means you should check your finances
Oh noes. Some unfortunate news has come out of Target this morning, with the big retailer informing everyone of a company-wide breach. It seems some no-good hackers got access to payment information for over 40 million shoppers who stepped into a Target store between the dates of November 27th and December 15, 2013 (which might have been you if you were looking for a great deal on Android phones or tablets during the big shopping season).
Target notes that they began investigating the incident as soon as they found out, and that they’ve thrown every resource that they have behind trying to rectify the situation. That includes contacting relevant authorities and all financial institutions.
While Target emphasizes that the breach only affected customers who shopped in their stores, we’d still keep an eye on bank statements if you shopped online. You can never be too safe in these situations, folks. So what’s going to happen from here?
- If Target finds that more sensitive identity-based information was accessed, they might offer free identity protection services.
- Target says they have closed the security hole and are continuing to investigate to make sure things are peachy clean (things should be relatively safe otherwise), but you should continue to monitor your accounts.
- You’ll want to check Target’s information page about this incident for any specific actions you might need to take based on your place of residence to make sure anything that happens as a result of this doesn’t affect your credit report.
Beyond all that, they say everything should be back to normal and assures us that folks can continue to shop with confidence. Whether or not you’re actually confident enough to do that is a personal decision to make for you and you alone. Be sure to head to the source link for more information.
[via Target]