Some 40 million customers who swiped their cards at Target got their numbers swiped by hackers. If you shopped at Target between November 27 and December 15, your credit card or debit card accounts might be at risk. How could this have happened? What do you do if you are one of the victims? Anderson asked Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans.
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Post by: AC360 Filed under: Christine Romans |
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I don't blame Target. Data breaches are becoming all too common. The credit card companies are to blame first of all. They continue to use ancient technology. The magnetic stripe is decades old. They choose to absorb the costs of fraud rather than spend money to distribute smart cards with embedded chips that have been in use in Europe for a decade. Furthermore law enforcement is still in the dark ages regarding computer and internet technology. The massive resources of NASA could be used to aggressively go after data thieves, spammers, hackers and the like but there is very minimal effort being made by government to protect our citizens from the scourge of crime in this area. The credit card companies could step up and lock down credit card fraud much, much tighter if they wanted to spend some money to do it. But they seem to just view it as a cost of doing business because they are making gigantic profits and have little incentive to change the status quo. I feel sorry for any business like Target that is vulnerable to data thieves because of this environment.