Articles about Credit Cards

Credit Cards for Women in Danger

The experts in the sphere of computer security state that this year around 120 million accounts were incurred a risk. No any cardholder would probably like to get the following message: "We notify you, that the Visa Company informed us of an unauthorized intrusion into your network". This is the real message that was sent to the customers of Washington Mutual Bank in September. The number of the messages sent is unknown. "This network fraud threatens the safety of your Washington Mutual ATM/Visa Check Card", - says the message. The credit card account numbers were stolen from one of the merchants.

But the Visa didn't inform the Washington Mutual Bank of what company is in charge of the information leakage. This message reminds a lot of the whole bunch of the similar messages, sent by the several banks from different parts of the country this year. It happened after BJ's Wholesale Club let a leakage of a rather big number of credit card account numbers. The company didn't tell what part of its 8 million customers got into the group of risk. The data could still be in the hands of hackers. Although, according to some unknown news sources, the dozens of banks had to issue dozens of thousands new low APR cards.

The mentioned above Washington Mutual letter also states, that the bank will issue new cards as a preventive measure, and the old cards will be no longer in force.

But this message arouses too many questions. What way the accounts were incurred a risk? How many victims there are? Why did that happen? What can we do to prevent such cases in future? The case with BJ wasn't really common, as the exact merchant, which was guilty, was found. In most cases cardholders would never find out what happened to their personal info.

Washington Mutual doesn't know this either. The bank doesn't have an opportunity to control the merchants of Visa that let the information leakage. The big number of investors were incurred a fraud. Unfortunately, the situation is not uncommon.

It's rather hard to tell, how really typical problems with credit fraud are, as everything is covered with a veil of mystery. But, according to the information of the companies, dealing with a provision of security to merchants, last year about 60 million accounts were incurred a risk, and this year this number may reach 120 million.

"Everybody says that this estimates are understated", - says Julie Ferguson, the co owner of the Clear Commerce Corp, a company distributing software products to fight the data theft.

Visa, MasterCard, and American Express insist that these estimates are exaggerations. "We didn't publish these data, but I can say that these figures are overstated", - says Linda Locke, MasterCard.

But Ferguson asserts that, according to the latest reports on the credit accounts information leakage, hundreds of accounts were incurred a risk, and millions got into the group of risk. Many cases of the data leakage have never even been reported at all.

"As for me, I am aware of the danger that was exposed to 1 million of entries last month", - she says. "The problem of data security is a scale trouble. Very few understand how serious it is".

Comments

cynthia l krepps, 04:45 AM, April 03, 2008

when it comes to hackers, everyone is in group of risk