It seems like everyday another corporation reveals that it has been outsmarted by vicious hackers. Starting back in December when Target revealed that over 40 million debit and credit card accounts were stolen over the Thanksgiving holiday, the security breaches have been rolling in. Shortly after the Target credit card breach, Neiman Marcus also revealed that there had been some tampering with customers’ payment card information with possible unauthorized charges made over the holiday season.
Since these two have come forward, media outlets have been reporting that at least three other department stores may have been targeted with customers’ credit card information being hacked; however, no one has provided a list of those stores just yet. Sounds like we all should just go back to the days of paying with cash.
In the meantime, hackers have been phishing away online and were able to gather usernames and passwords of millions of users across a number of platforms online in hopes of gaining pertinent personal information that could lead to identify theft and fraud.
Tech experts advise individuals to use extra precautions when selecting passwords and never use sequential numbers or letters. It is best to use a combination of lower and uppercase letters along with numbers and symbols to make your password unique and harder to configure and most definitely do not use the same password across multiple sites and services.
Whether in stores, online or even over the phone, do your best to protect yourself at all times. The hackers are lurking everywhere!
Click the link to see which sites and stores have fallen victim to security breaches so far this year.
