Store details hacked again

Another email today from a store telling me they were hacked and my name, address, contact details and last four digits of payment card "may" have been taken. That's the third store in the last year! So looks like I'll have to keep paying my Experian membership a bit longer then.

I would also suggest "freezing" your credit reports, so no one can open new credit with your information.


Note: There is a "fourth" credit bureau not mentioned on the FTC site...Innovis.

Include them as well.

Sorry to hear that, Hazel. It is incredibly frustrating how common these retail breaches have become lately!

On top of the excellent advice from Banjoman about freezing your credit reports, here are a few proactive steps you can take to shield your details so there is less for them to lose next time:

• Use Virtual/Masked Cards: Services like Privacy (or built-in features from banks like Capital One/Revolut) let you generate merchant-locked burner cards. If that specific store gets breached, you can just delete that virtual card instantly, and your real card is never exposed.
• Lean on Digital Wallets: Whenever possible, check out using PayPal, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. They use tokenization, meaning the store never actually sees or stores your real payment details.
• Mask Your Email Address: Since you're using Firefox, check out Firefox Relay (or iCloud's Hide My Email / DuckDuckGo Email Protection). They let you create unique email aliases for every site. If a store gets hacked, your real inbox stays clean, and you can just delete that specific alias to kill any incoming phishing attempts.
• Ditch the Store Accounts: Try checking out as a guest whenever you can. If you don't save your profile, address, and card details on their servers, they can't leak them later.

It is definitely an uphill battle keeping our data safe these days, but these tweaks can help take some of the stress out of it!

Hazel123 said:

last four digits of payment card "may" have been taken.

Click to expand...

I have my card details online in one place and one place only....Paypal. I do not buy from any place that does not accept Paypal.
I also have 2-step verification set up for Paypal.

For all my accounts, I use a password manager and save NO logins and passwords in my browsers. That way I can create really difficult passwords and not have to remember them. Some will argue that password managers can also be hacked, and that is true, But I figure their security against hackers is much better than mine.

I was involved in a hacking event from 3 different hospitals over the last 2 years so I feel your pain about all the spam email you will eventually get unless you change your email account. But if that's all the hackers got, you are fortunate. Your name, address, and phone number are public information anyway.
The amount of information on me that is on the dark web is as long as your arm because of those 3 times.