Back on August 4th I wrote a post about our credit card number being stolen. We took precautions and canceled the card. But ever since then we have been wondering how a thief got a hold of the information – we tend to be very careful.
Well last week we received a letter in the mail that explained everything. The letter was from a company called Network Solutions. They provide software services to merchants who do credit card transactions. In their letter they explained that they “recently discovered that information on some credit card transactions, including card account numbers, names and addresses, was intentionally diverted from some of its servers to servers outside of the company by an unknown source.” Over 4,000 merchants were affected. Wow!
So know we know how our information was stolen. The good news? We caught it quickly because we check our credit card info online pretty often. Also, it was good to know it was not something we did. The bad news? No matter how careful we are, when companies mess up or are intentionally hacked our information is vulnerable. Not necessarily very reassuring. Especially since the transactions involved happened from March through the beginning of July – and the letter came in August!
To give proper credit, Network Solutions is doing some things right:
- They notified us (I have read reports of other companies just sweeping things under.
- They will give us 1 free year of credit monitoring service
- They gave tips on calling credit card company, attorney general, and on placing fraud alerts on our credit files.
This incident will not keep us from using credit cards. But it reminds us to be careful and to be vigilent with our data at all times.
