40 M Credit and Debit Info Stolen From Target

 

By TLB Contributor: Ken LaRive

I no longer shop at Target, and haven’t for one year. The reason for this occurred one afternoon when, along with my grocery shopping, I wanted to purchase a bottle of wine. The young lady, innocent but well trained, carded me. Well, I’m normally a trusting person, so when she put her hand out for my driver’s license, I gave it to her…

She took the card, and without looking at it, inserted it into what looked to be a special slot in the middle of her giant register… Without my permission, all of the data on my driver’s license was open to take into their data bank. I was incensed. Now I don’t know if anything was taken, but I just have to trust nothing was… but I ask you, what kind of fool would not question this?

I called the Lafayette Police, Target’s corporate office, and spoke with the store manager, and all of them told me that only my birth date was taken. They told me not to worry…

Yes, I’m going to trust them. It is only because they want to make sure they only sell liquor to someone of legal age, and they don’t want to be discriminatory. Yes, being discriminatory is against social norms and protected by law, and a 64 year old man just has to be trusting…

It has nothing to do with the amazing compilation of information gleaned, from the type of drugs I take from their pharmacy, to the brand of wine I drink. It has nothing at all to do with a bottom line, profit, or the ability to “target” me for specific advertising… And I have to just trust that they have my welfare, and the general welfare of everyone else as primary…

Well today Target admitted that 40 million credit and debit card accounts was stolen from their data base. And one has to wonder, if the data base was breached, what else could have been taken?

Am I too paranoid to even consider what a super computer could do to connect dots with such an amazing amount of information? What could be learned from the NSA’s theft of our phone and email records? Without a viable Constitution, as due process is destroyed by the Patriot Act two, and the NDAA, what would a super computer do with that information, along with your Face Book, and all of the other social media readily available?  And what of Obama Care, where all of my medical history now belongs to government. Oh, I’m just too sensitive. Everything has to be okay, because they told me so. And why has this information been turned over to Israel?

So far, Target will not disclose how the breach occurred, but said the problem was fixed. Really? Oh, everything is okay? With 1,797 U.S. stores and 124 in Canada, everything is just honky-dory.

“The fact this breach can happen with all of their security in place is really alarming,” said Avivah Litan, a security analyst with Gartner Research.

The Denver Post:

“Target is just the latest retailer to be hit with a data breach. TJX Cos., which runs stores such as T.J. Maxx and Marshall’s, had a breach that began in July 2005 that exposed at least 45.7 million credit and debit cards to possible fraud. The breach wasn’t detected until December 2006. In June 2009 TJX agreed to pay $9.75 million in a settlement with multiple states related to the massive data theft but stressed at the time that it firmly believed it did not violate any consumer protection or data security laws.”

Oh, everything is just fine. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  How to know if your card was affected by Target’s data breach.

 

See original here: http://www.examiner.com/article/40-m-credit-and-debit-info-stolen-from-target