Lost Credit Data Improperly Kept, Company Admits

Zak3056 writes "Last week, Mastercard announced that up to 40,000,000 credit card numbers may have been compromised by one of their processing companies. Today, the New York Times (registration, along with first born child, required) is reporting that the company in question, CardSystems Solutions, should not have been retaining that data to begin with. John M. Perry, CEO of the processor in question, claims the data was merely being kept for 'research purposes.' The number of compromised Master Card accounts has been revised downward to about 68,000, with another 132,000 possibly compromised accounts belonging to Visa, American Express, and other companies."

Comments

this is not an error

[nilbog]

This isn't an error at all, it's actually a *feature* of your credit card agreement. Gets your card number out there so you don't have to bother giving it to retailers - they already have it!

Re:Full text of the article

[w98]

As for the sensitive data, he added, "We no longer store it on files."

Now they store it on tape so UPS can lose it instead.

It's like the commercials

[jim_v2000]

Internet connection - $30
Homemade Computer - $700
2 Liters of Mountain Dew - $2

Stealing 40 Million people's credit card information with your 1337 h@x0r s|i77z - Priceless.

There's somethings that money can't buy, but for everything else, there's MasterCard.