Please read this notice as it is NOT an April Fool's joke of any kind. We know this first hand and I will explain and give you a link to get more information.
Some apparently even more clever than usual computer hackers hacked into the credit card processing division of Hannaford Brothers Grocery chain. This is a large family of stores which includes Shop N Save and Sweet Bay, just to name a couple. If you used any credit card at any of their stores between December 7, 2007 and March 10 of 2008, your credit card number MAY have been compromised and there could be trouble ahead for you- as there was for us. Depending on your card issuer there are several means for dealing with the problem- none of which are subject to your input or control.
For us, without warning late last night, both of our Bank of America cards went "off line" and were closed on the spot. This was a preemptive move on the part of the bank and we are happy they are on top of things but it poses some immediate and difficult challenges to be sure- as we apparently have only three business days to get every last arrangement changed over to the newly issued cards (which we don't even have yet!). Because we are on the road non-stop, we have automated as many payments as possible to those cards and getting in touch with everyone in short order will be difficult at best.
But this is not intended to be a post about our temporary situation- rather a warning to you if you have used a card at any of the Hannaford stores. We would urge you to call you card customer service number and see if you have been exposed, because the closing of the account may come, as ours did, right out of the blue- no warning at all. In fact, when we knowingly used a card at one of their stores after the problem had been caught, they told us we would not have a problem as a result of using the card. WRONG!
Here is a link to the Hannaford site that discusses the breach. From this site you can research the matter as deeply as you deem appropriate.
Potentially ALL Hannaford customers who used credit cards during this time period are at risk for fraudulent use of their card account numbers. Beware.
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2 comments:
Last month our credit union called us to say that my debit card had been "compromised". Not three days before we had seen a news story on the St. Petersburg, FL TV channels that the records of Sweetbay had been hacked. Guess where I had shopped while visiting Florida? Still waiting for my new debit card to catch up to us--thank goodness Denny has a different card number for our account so we still had access to our account with that. It IS a pain to try to deal with all of that on the road, but having the Internet available through Hughes.net certainly helps.
We too had my debit card compromised. I used it at Sweetbay while we were in Peace River. My credit union picked up on it and immediately held up any transactions on my card and have sent me a new one. We too used Ken's card until the new one was issued.
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