Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Banking update

So I have my card closed, my paperwork filled out and everything resolved. As it turns out, I WAS one of the victims of this:

Hackers have accessed credit and debit card numbers from Sweetbay grocery stores by breaking into the Hannaford computer network.
The hackers had access to 1.6 million card numbers from Sweetbay customers in Florida.
So far there've been fewer than 2,000 cases of attempted credit card fraud reported to the company.


A Sweetbay spokesperson said anyone who shopped there between December and March 8 should check their bank accounts carefully.

Sweetbay said no other personal information, such as names or addresses, were stolen.

Sweetbay is working with police to find out who hacked the system.

The intrusion affected Hannaford stores in New England and New York State and Sweetbay stores in Florida.

The data was illegally accessed from Hannaford's computer systems during the card authorization transmission process, according to a press release

As for me personally, over $400 in transactions were attempted. And Fifth Third stopped it so quickly (I found out today that it was caught so quickly in large part because a lot of their customers WERE victims in this scam so they were specifically looking for this type of activity on the account) that, thank God, the money was never actually deducted from my account. The damage, including the actual money and the resulting fees, could have been ugly. But I had virtually no fallout, other than some inconvenience of lack of access to my account, changing my card number, a trip to the bank and some signatures.

So...everything is, for all intents and purposes, back to normal. I have a temporary card while I wait for my new one. And as one commenter said, I'm staying away from Sweetbay. =-)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sure glad it's going as well as it can given the circumstances. Sorry it happened, though.

Also, props for using the phrase "for all intents and purposes" correctly. For years I thought it was: for all intensive purposes. I know- nobody cares, but I had to share.

Nik said...

That's awesome that everything got handled so smoothly and quickly. This could have been so ugly, but I'm glad it all worked out for you and that you didn't get screwed.

Jen said...

Anna: also off topic is the use of hte word "supposably" instead of "supposedly". I HATE IT. One of my fellow TEACHERS does it even

Renee said...

LOL, Anna!

Jen, I'm with you on that word, too. Brent's teacher mispronounces a lot of words, too, and it drives me MAD. Teachers should be grammatically correct all the time! What gives?

Anonymous said...

Hey Jen, remember Kim saying "pacificly" instead of "specifically?" Man, that one drives me crazy just remembering it!