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Another day, another massive security breach.
The gas station and convenience store chain Wawa said Thursday that malware in its payment processing system may have been collecting customers’ debit and credit card numbers since March. The breach affected all 850 Wawa locations, which are on the East Coast from Pennsylvania to Florida, the Associated Press reported. Wawa says it will notify customers and offer free credit card monitoring.
It’s one of several recent data breaches.
Food delivery app DoorDash said in September that “an unauthorized third party” accessed some of its user data in May, affecting about 4.9 million customers, merchants and DoorDash delivery people who joined the platform on or before April 5, 2018. In that case, the company said not enough information was released for hackers to ring up fraudulent charges.
Compromised data included profile information, including names, delivery addresses, and order history. For some consumers, the last four digits of credit cards were exposed.
About 100,000 delivery people had their driver’s license numbers compromised, DoorDash said.
Capital One Financial Corp. COF, +0.94% said in July that more than 100 million people had their personal information hacked. The hacker got information including credit scores and balances, ZIP codes, email addresses, dates of birth, self-reported income and payments history, fragments of transaction data, plus the Social Security numbers of about 140,000 customers and 80,000 bank-account numbers from credit-card customers, the bank said.
Capital One couldn’t say for sure whether the leaked data was used for fraud, but said it was unlikely. It first heard about the hack on July 19, but waited until July 29 to inform customers; it sought help from law enforcement to catch the alleged perpetrator.
Capital One couldn’t say for sure whether the leaked data was used for fraud. It first heard about the hack on July 19, but waited until July 29 to inform customers. Over that time, it sought help from law enforcement.
Like Wawa, Capital One offered customers free credit monitoring.
However, privacy experts say credit monitoring only looks for changes on a credit report, indicating that someone is using your personal information to open new accounts in your name. But it does not prevent someone from taking out a loan in your name.
Such security precautions are unlikely to help people protect against a hack. Exposure of data that can’t be changed, such as Social Security numbers, are the hallmarks of particularly severe data breaches.
Be on your toes after a major hack or data breach. Never give out personal details over the telephone, even if the caller seems to represent the company that recently had a data breach or the email appears to be from that company. Consumers need to be careful whenever they are contacted by an unsolicited caller. Hang up and call the number on your card.
Here’s what you should do if your data is breached, particularly if your credit-card or Social Security Numbers were exposed:
1. Check whether your accounts have been affected
There still aren’t many formal ways to check whether your data has been compromised in a breach. Often, the company will alert affected customers, but they aren’t required to. Some states, like California, have laws requiring companies to disclose data breaches that affect a certain number of customers, and the Federal Trade Commission has discussed proposing similar regulations. Consumers can also monitor their credit report to shut down fraudulent activity as quickly as possible.
2. Sign up for additional fraud protection
Security experts generally recommend never re-using security passwords and say people should use two-factor authentication, which requires a user to enter a code sent to their phone or email to log into an app or website or to change a password. They also say those affected by such hacks should freeze their credit report — it’s now free to do that.
Paid services such as Lifelock, EZ Shield and Identity Guard go beyond typical credit freezing and alert services. The most basic version of Lifelock costs $9.99 per month and provides benefits including address change verification, help canceling or replacing lost credit cards, driver’s licenses, Social Security cards and insurance cards, plus a “restoration team” that helps correct any identity-theft issues and black-market website surveillance.
3. Know the difference between a credit freeze and a lock
A freeze means that a consumer cannot take out a new loan or credit card without “unfreezing” the report first, but also prevents a hacker from taking out a loan in your name. Credit agencies also offer a service called credit “locking,” which offers the same protections as a freeze, but typically costs a monthly fee. Contact Equifax, Experian EXPN, +0.87% and TransUnion TRU, +0.06% to request a freeze.
4. Know the difference between a hack and a breach
A breach is when data is unintentionally left unsecured and vulnerable to hacking, as a result of malicious activity or from negligence. A hack specifically refers to the activities of cyber attackers who purposely compromise IT infrastructure to steal information or to hold systems ransom. If your data was involved in a breach, it’s possible it was just left exposed online and was not stolen.
Be on your toes after a major hack or data breach. Never give out personal details over the telephone, even if the caller seems to represent a company that recently experienced a breach.
Two years after Equifax EFX, +0.12% revealed that hackers accessed the personal information of up to 147 million people, the credit reporting bureau announced a settlement for up to $700 million, including $425 million in relief for those who have been affected.
Last year, Facebook FB, +0.38% announced that U.K.-based Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed 87 million Facebook users’ data. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress and vowed to do more to fix the problem, and help make sure that nothing like that happens again. Cambridge Analytica closed down in the wake of the scandal. The Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion.
WhatsApp, the messaging and audio app owned by Facebook, announced in 2018 that hackers were able to install spyware on Android smartphones and Apple AAPL, +0.31% iPhones. “This attack has all the hallmarks of a private company known to work with governments to deliver spyware that reportedly takes over the functions of mobile phone operating systems,” the company said at the time.
More than 57 million customers of Uber UBER, +1.45% had their data exposed by a massive hack in October 2016. Uber fired its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, and one of his deputies, for concealing the hack, which included the email addresses of 50 million Uber riders around the world. The revelation was made a year after the attack. It also affected 7 million drivers.
(The Associated Press, Jacob Passy, Maria LaMagna and Kari Paul contributed to this story.)
