100 million Personal Banking Records Breached?
Could 
100 million personal banking records which includes personal banking information have been breached?
If you thought things can’t get any worse, this could scare you into a financial stupor.
According to the video below, your social security, your bank accounts, your telephone numbers and all manner of personal information were likely stolen by criminal elements in eastern Europe according to the US Secret Service.
Bob Carr, the CEO of Heartland Payment Systems made the announcement on January 20, 2009, but it happened in 2008…Watch the Video..Then read the following post below.
With all the big noise from the worldwide financial fiasco, this piece of news was almost drowned out. But better late than never…
If you’ve read this post previously, yes, it has been edited to reflect a better balance of the above scare, with the latest development.
But it is never too late to be cautious in these days of extreme internet breaches. Even huge corporations can become victimized and brought to their knees. What’s scary is that it is not just American merchant and customers but it may affect Canadian ones too.
However, it is not too late at any time to be extra cautious about your own financial and information security. The following is added with the latest development of the Heartland issue in mind. Read the source in the comments below.
The following is reprinted in part from 2008breach.com a Heartland Payment System information site.
Gartner Inc. in a statement urges Heartland Merchants and Prospects to continue using Heartland.
March 23, 2009
To Heartland Merchants and Prospects:
As you may know, Visa® recently and temporarily removed Heartland from its list of PCI DSS compliant service providers.
Today, Gartner, Inc. — a leading information technology research and advisory company — urges merchants and other card-accepting enterprises using Heartland …:
“Take no action, because the processors will likely be recertified soon.”
Here is some additional important information:
On March 19, Visa issued a statement indicating that merchants and other card-payment-accepting enterprises can continue to do business with U.S. payment processor Heartland Payment Systems … without threat of fines from Visa. These terms will remain valid as long as the … payment processor continues to work on revalidating [its] own PCI compliance status, which they expect to complete within weeks.
That means you can continue to do business — or start doing business — with Heartland despite our temporary removal from the list.
Visa has also stated businesses using Heartland to process its transactions will not be subject to any fines associated with Heartland’s removal from the list as long as the business’ own PCI DSS validation requirements have been satisfied.
If a card brand attempts to fine you solely because you process with Heartland, Heartland will defend you against the card brand’s claim to collect the fine. Heartland will reimburse you the amount of the fine in the event the fine is found to be legally enforceable.
To their credit, Heartland appears to be taking responsibility for the Breach and is doing the right things to repair their reputation, instead of sweeping everything under the carpet. Click 2008breach.com (to read more).
Read what others are saying about it…If you’re worried about your security… Widespread caution but Visa/Mastercard…
P.S. Please be nice and constructive when leaving your comments.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Stephen: you have some serious inaccuracies in this post. Please email immediately at the address I left you and I will make sure you have the facts.
Jason Maloni
Heartland Payment Systems
Hi Jason,
Thanks for your comments. In this post I am reporting a rather scary situation – and as you can see from the video, it is scary. But, if you do have contrary information and wish to make contrary statements, please post it here. My readers will appreciate it and so will I.
In fact, this is a very serious issue and if you do have good information, I would like to follow it up and perhaps include another post on my blog explaining the new information.
E-mail forwarded to Jason Maloni.
[...] bookmarks tagged banking 100 million Personal Banking Records Breached | Pe… saved by 1 others streetchina bookmarked on 03/27/09 | [...]
Reprinted from an e-mail from Jason Maloni,
1) We believe the data compromise was due to extremely sophisticated malicious software found on our system that law enforcement believes came from a an global cybercrime organization.
2) The compromise included card numbers and expiration dates and, in a small number of cases, card names. It did NOT include social security numbers, unencrypted PINs, addresses, zip codes, CVV2 numbers or phone numbers.
2) The total size of the data compromise is not known. “100 million” is simply speculation.
3) Because personally identifiable information (above) was NOT included in the breach, we have seen NO examples of identity theft.
4) Anecdotally, we’ve seen very few examples of fraud as a result of this breach. Merchants and consumers are not responsible for fraud on their cards.
5) There are reports from the US Secret Service and Florida law enforcement that arrests have already been made in the case.
I hope this information helps. Please feel free to cite me as a spokesman for Heartland.
Jason Maloni
Heartland Payment Systems
[...] BankJim Rogers Dumping Bank InvestmentsLondon Leads Global Financial Centre Report100 million Personal Banking Records Breached?My First Bank AccountHow the Rich Fake PovertyTax Haven Secrecy versus HypocracySwiss Private Bank [...]