Just saw this, folks and thought if any of you have an account with CitiBank, you might want to find out if your account data has been compromised.
“Citigroup Inc. said computer hackers breached the bank's network and accessed the data of about 200,000 bank card holders in North America, the latest of a string of cyber attacks on high-profile companies.
Citi said the names of customers, account numbers and contact information, including email addresses, were viewed in the breach, which the Financial Times (newspaper operates behind a paywall) said was discovered by the bank in early May.
However, Citi said other information such as birth dates, social security numbers, card expiration dates and card security codes (CVV) were not compromised.
"We are contacting customers whose information was impacted. Citi has implemented enhanced procedures to prevent a recurrence of this type of event," Sean Kevelighan, a U.S.-based spokesman, said by email.
"For the security of these customers, we are not disclosing further details."
Citigroup global enterprise payments head Paul Galant, who previously ran the bank's credit card unit, said in April that security breaches are a fact of life for financial institutions.
"Security breaches happen, they're going to continue to happen ... the mission of the banking industry is to keep the customer base safe and customers feeling secure about their financial transactions and payments," he told Reuters in an interview.” – MSNBC
This is rich. “Keep the customers feeling secure about their financial transactions and payments” indeed. The fact is, that’s just whitewash:
"It may be the bank's business, but it's the consumer's personal information so consumers deserve to be told about security breaches immediately," said Dan Simpson, a spokesman for Australia's Consumer Action Law Centre, an advocacy group.
"It's hard to see any reason why this sort of breach couldn't have been disclosed much sooner."
The reason is bad PR for the bank, mate. They’re more concerned for their stock options than the customer. Sound familiar?
Seems to me if there were a law making the Institution liable to reimburse every customer loss related to such a data theft without right of appeal, I think we’d see action really quickly. Don’t you?
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43335996/ns/business-personal_finance/