watch your credit cards

  1. 1,058 Posts.
    I use a cash card and keep the balance low. The following indicates why.

    A massive computer hack this month was more serious than previously announced, with up to 8 million customer accounts viewed by an unauthorized intruder.
    The hacker was able to breach security for credit card giants such as MasterCard, Visa and American Express.
    Yesterday, both Visa and MasterCard had said the hacker could look at as many as 2.2 million accounts after getting into the security system of a firm that handles transactions for merchants. But the figure was raised today after further investigation.
    "Visa's fraud team immediately notified all affected card-issuing financial institutions and is working with the third-party payment card processor to protect against the threat of a future intrusion,'' Rosetta Jones, a Visa USA director, said in a statement.
    None of the card companies are naming the third-party processor or give details on precisely when or how the intrusion occurred. As a result, it's not being made public if the incident was the result of an outside hacker, an inside job by an employee or even physical theft of a database.
    While Visa said none of its compromised cards had been used fraudulently, MasterCard would not make the same assurance.
    Both have zero-liability policies, which protect cardholders from financial responsibility is someone uses a card fraudulently.
    The affected accounts make up almost 1 percent of the 574 million Visa and MasterCard cards in the United States.
 
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