Banks move to protect Hannaford breach victims
BARRE, Vt.—Vermont banks are scurrying to help consumers put at risk by a supermarket chain's data breach, reissuing cards and monitoring account activity in hopes of protecting them from fraud.
Some are automatically reissuing cards, others are more actively monitoring account activity, using information obtained from Visa and MasterCard about which customers shopped at 14 Hannaford Bros. Co. grocery stores in Vermont.
The Vermont Attorney General's office says it has only received one call from a Hannaford customer and has no indication that any Vermonters have been ripped off as a result of the breach.
But Northfield Savings Bank and Granite Hills Credit Union are automatically issuing new cards to customers identified by VISA or MasterCard as being Hannaford customers.
The Vermont State Employees Credit Union has notified more than 5,000 of its members that they may be affected.
The breach by Scarborough, Maine-based Hannaford exposed up to 4.2 million credit and debit card holders to potential fraud, the company announced Monday. About 1,800 instances of fraud have been reported, according to company officials.
"Not every banking institution is choosing to close cards, but we feel that even though we have experienced little to no fraud activity on our customers' cards, we are taking extra precautions to contact our customers and close and reissue those cards," said Tina de la Torre, marketing director for Northfield Savings Bank.
Granite Hills Credit Union told customers in a Web site posting that new cards will be mailed out April 5.
The 42,000-member Vermont State Employees Credit Union has notified approximately 5,200 of them that their cards may have been affected.
Steven Post, CEO of the company, says the credit union so far has not detected any unusual activity, Post said.
"We're doing letters, and members if they call and want us to issue a new card, we'll do that," Post said.
Christopher D'Elia, the president of the Vermont Bankers Association, said that each bank is dealing with the security breach in its own way, depending on the level of risk to and numbers of customers.
There's reason for worry.
Unauthorized charges have begun popping up on credit and debit cards numbers. Thieves have already used the card numbers along the East Coast and in the South, as well as in faraway places such as Mexico, Italy and Bulgaria.
Florida's consumer fraud division had received 16 complaints that appear linked to the theft of data from Sweetbay stores, Sandi Copes, a spokeswoman for the Florida attorney general, told the Portland Press Herald.
One complaint was for a $1,500 charge in Italy that a credit card company had blocked, she said. A charge of $1,270 in Bulgaria went through, but the card company refunded the amount to the cardholder, she added. Charges at Bloomingdale's in New York City were stopped because the card had been cancelled.
Police in Portland, Maine, are investigating four cases of reported fraud on cards that had been used at Hannaford stores.
One customer reported unauthorized gas station and convenience store charges in Texas and Alabama, and another cited charges in Florida, said Sgt. Robert Martin. Two other cases involved unauthorized charges at
The breach is being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service.
"We have stopped the breach, and so we were able to contain the data intrusion, and then we have been working diligently on a couple fronts ... (including) an active and ongoing investigation led by the Secret Service to further strengthen our security system," said Hannaford spokeswoman Carol Eleazer.
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Information from: The Times Argus, http://www.timesargus.com/
