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Up To 1.5 Million Visa, MasterCard Credit Card Numbers Stolen

Posted by samzenpus on from the big-score dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Global Payments, the U.S.-based credit card processor company that experienced a security breach affecting Visa and MasterCard, confirmed that the breached portion of its processing system was confined to North America. The company also finally revealed how many credit card numbers were stolen: around 1,500,000."

2 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Recourse? by mws1066 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And what recourse do card holders have? How do we know if our number was stolen, passed around, and now someone is just holding onto it indefinitely and might leap to use it after this whole thing blows over? A bit frightening.

    --
    Nothing is more dangerous than a programmer with a screwdriver.
    1. Re:Recourse? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think that Global Payments should be forced to contact all people who had their information stolen AND re-imburse them for any damages

      Your recourse is through your bank and/or card issuer, not the processor, and that fact is greatly beneficial to you. A massive breach could easily put a company out of business, especially if that company were already in trouble. In that situation, if they were liable for your losses, you would have to wait years for bankruptcy court to sort it out, and you would likely only get back a portion of your losses. The bank that issued your card is legally required to have the cash on hand to be able to pay you back, so it works out much better for you that it is their obligation. Yes, you may have to fill out a few forms, and your money will not come back instantaneously, but I don't think there's a constitutional amendment requiring that you never be mildly inconvenienced, so suck it up and take it. Shit happens.