The Target Hack =
Credit Card Theft, Debit Card Theft, or Identity Theft?
Pick all of
the above you think applies and write you answer(s) on a piece of paper.
Now before I
write much more I want you to know I’ve been the victim of Credit Card Theft on
at least one occasion and possibly two.
I’ll tell you more about that later.
Before I
give you the correct answer(s) to the question I posed in the title, I feel it
necessary to review some information regarding the TARGET HACK.
First and
foremost the biggest victim of this event was, get ready……..TARGET. (No I do
not work for Target. I have never worked
for Target and to the best of my knowledge have no friends or relatives who are
now or have been in the past Target employees.)
Let me
explain why I say Target is the biggest and hardest hit victim of the criminal
act. They, to the best of my knowledge,
did nothing different than any other major chain store in dealing with credit
cards. They were doing what thousands of
stores do every day. They were taking
care of business.
After Target
did the right thing and told the world about all of the stolen data, el crappo
hitta de blado. It happened at the worst
time of the year and the media was all over this like stink on a monkey. Sales dropped. Some of the media had the story right but
many had it wrong. Certainly many
consumers had it very wrong. Not to
mention those salivating lawyers just hovering overhead like vultures gearing
up to file money grubbing class action lawsuits.
Just the
other day I was in line making a return (This was not at TARGET) when the woman
in front of me went ballistic on the clerk because of her recent “Identity
Theft” she claimed to have suffered because of Target. She said she was a smarter consumer now, but
I beg to differ with her. After
listening to her rendition of “Whoa Is Me and My Missing Identity” I can say
with 100 per cent conviction this lady would have to climb a ladder just to get
up to the level of village idiot.
There is a chasm of difference
between Credit Card / Debit Card Theft, and Identity Theft.
Credit Card
Theft is either the physical theft of your credit card or theft of the
information of your credit card so it can be used by a person other than the
card owner or authorized party for fraudulent purposes.
Debit Card
Theft is the same as Credit Card Theft.
Identity
Theft is by far the most serious event.
This amounts to the theft of enough personal information so a mirror
identity can be created and used to fraudulently make purchases, obtain credit,
give false information under the guise of being a different person, or mislead.
The info
hacked from Target was Credit Card and Debit Card data, so, now you know the
information taken by the TARGET Hackers did not amount to identity theft.
Debit Card
Theft is the second most serious of the three items mentioned. It’s serious for the very reason I hate debit
cards. When you use your debit card the
money is IMMEDIATELY removed from your account.
You cannot easily contest a debit card purchase and if it stolen and
used YOU could be on the hook for the first $500. This amount may vary by bank, but regardless
it’s considerably more than your $50 liability for a stolen credit card.
I just told
you about the credit card liability but I didn’t mention that if you have a
good history with the credit card company and report a stolen card promptly
many credit card companies will waive the 50 beans so you are out nothing. I personally like my credit cards because I
pay off the balance monthly and am getting an interest free 30 day loan.
For the most
part credit card theft isn’t that tough of a deal when it happens. I mentioned earlier I’ve been there. Here’s how it happened. I generally am a creature of habit and use my
card(s) at the same place(s). One time I
was running low on gas and tanked up at a station on Charleston. It was the only odd location where I had used my
card during the billing period so logic dictates it must have happened
there.
I am
judicious about checking my charges every day.
Forty-eight hours after my gas up I noticed a radioshack.com purchase
which I knew was not mine. I IMMEDIATELY
called AmEx and cancelled the card.
They, in return, were glad I was so conscientious that they waived any
fee and sent me out new cards – STAT.
Solution – easy – cancel the card and get a new number.
About that
possible second time. It was about six
weeks ago I got a letter from the Community Colleges of Arizona telling me my
information was POSSIBLY stolen from their database along with 2 MILLION others. The letter didn’t look real and since I never
attended any classes or correspondence classes at any of the listed campuses, I
questioned the validity of this letter.
I actually called them after looking up the information on the Internet
and played 50 questions. My last name
was spelled wrong and I concluded they made an error in their findings, however,
they gave me FREE ID Theft protection from a major vendor.
The good
news is that same simple solution applies to debit cards. Cancel the damn thing and get a new
number. Bad news – that $500 possible charge. Hey, it’s the risk we run for living in a
plastic world.
The TARGET
HACK made huge news, not so much because of the information stolen but more so
because of the sheer volume of stolen info.
The number being tossed about is 40 million consumer accounts. Hackers don’t want 40 million consumer
accounts. They want money. It’s already known the rush is on to sell
that information. Just imagine how long
it will take to farm 40 million accounts.
Much of that info will be unusable in very short order. At $.25 per account this info is worth
$10,000,000 but not for very long. Every
hour the price drops because more of those account numbers are being
cancelled. I’ve heard that 20% or
8,000,000 probably weren’t worth much to begin with.
So what have
we learned:
1) What happened at TARGET was Debit
Card/Credit Card Theft and NOT Identity
Theft.
2) Credit Card Stolen – Quickly cancel
card and move on with life.
3) Debit Card Stolen – See #2 or better
still don’t use a debit card – PERIOD.
4) Identity Stolen – You’re going to be
screwed and inconvenienced for a long time.
5) Hacking Systems and getting caught
will put you in the slammer.
6) Buying stolen account information is
a waste of money and may get you a room
with your hacking buddy.
January 10, 2014 TARGET HACK UPDATE
MORE BAD NEWS FOR TARGET - BUT POSSIBLY SOME GOOD NEWS FOR THOSE HACKED.......SEE BELOW.....
I'm sure, just when Target's executive management team thought things couldn't get any worse.....well, let's just say - whoops.
Today Target executives announced the original hack was nearly TWICE as bad than originally expected. Instead of 40 million chunks of stolen data it turns out to be, here it comes, 70 million. This is not good news for Target and its stock holders. They have already announced they fully expect quarterly earnings to drop. No surprise on that, however, this next part could be good news for those that were the secondary victims.
Firstly, it is suspected that 20% of the stolen info is bad, for reasons of such things as bad credit and the like. Now 20% of 70,000,000 is a whopping 1.4 million pieces of bad, or nearly worthless information.
Next, as mentioned earlier, it takes time to farm through all of this to determine what's good and what's bad. Shoveling through 70 million accounts will take nearly twice as long as sifting through 40 million. With a crime of this magnitude, time becomes the thief's worst enemy. From the criminals perspective, you need to shed this stuff quickly and quietly, and settle for pennies on the $ of your asking price.
Maybe a better way to look at this is to think of it as counting 70,000,000 $1 bills at one per second. If you counted non-stop it would take nearly 2-1/4 years to finish the task. Keep in mind, with 20% waste nearly 1/2 year is time wasted. Every day that passes more of the good data slowly can become rotten.
The thief, or probably thieves, in this case do stand to make a lot of money if they can unload this quickly and quietly. There is also a very good chance of ending up in the slammer and/or DEAD.
I'm thinking a well planned bank robbery is still very stupid, but it sure seems smarter than hacking this much data.
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