Data Breach Sunday: Hannaford Bros. Grocery Hacked

March 23, 2008

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Customers who shopped at Hannaford Bros. and Sweetbay grocery stores between December 7 and March 10 had better check their statements very closely.

Someone hacked into their system during the card authorization procedure and stole 4.2 million card numbers. Luckily, no personal information like names etc. were exposed.

Hannaford has confirmed that there are at least 1,800 known cases of fraud as a result, but I have to assume that there are a lot more that have not come out yet.

The worst part of this is that it was not only credit card numbers that were released, but debit cards as well. This is one reason why I think that Visa and Mastercard need to be able to inform customers about where the breach occurred - so they can know whether or not they are at risk and move to protect themselves if neccessary.

My wife received a new credit card a while ago with no explanation other than it was known to have been at risk - no explanation for what the risk was. It was extremely frustrating as a consumer.

If you knew that your card had been involved in a data breach and you knew the store where it happened, would you stop shopping there?

Source: MSNBC 

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