by CKR
40,000,000 credit cards were compromised by hacking.
That's probably all of us. The earlier incidents only--only!--involved a few million or so. We could figure it wasn't us.
Do the companies plan to send us all new cards?
MasterCard officials said consumers are not held responsible for unauthorized charges on their cards, and that other sensitive personal data, such as Social Security numbers and birth dates, were not stored in the hacked system.I suspect they expect us to be happy with this.
Not only do credit card companies and banks that issue cards bear no losses for fraudulent purchases, but banks charge merchants for reversing unauthorized charges.So it's the merchants and the individuals who will suffer identity theft who will suffer, not the folks who had inadequate enough computer security that they didn't even notice this little intrusion for half a year.
Seems like maybe there should be a law about this. Some in Congress, including Charles Schumer according to the article, agree. MasterCard is said to back a law requiring that clients be notified when security on their card is breached. Or we could listen to the extreme freemarketers and agree that it's just one of the risks we agree to take in a free society.