The Supermarket chain Supervalu Inc. has disclosed that it has joined the growing list of major companies suffering a major data breach.  Although the breach apparently occurred between June 22nd and July 17th, it was only disclosed a few days ago.  Supervalu operates stores under a number of different names including Cub Foods, Hornbacher’s, Shop ‘n Save, Shoppers Food & Pharmacy and Farm Fresh.  In addition, the data breach also apparently affected stores that it sold in 2013, but still supplied the information technology services that were the Achilles heel in this data breaches.  Those stores go under the names Albertsons Acme (not necessarily the same one used by Wylie Coyote) Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s and Star Market.  All in all the data breach may have reached as many as 1,000 stores.  It has been confirmed that the breach which, as in the case of the Target data breach occurred at the point of sale card registers included account numbers, expiration dates and cardholder names.

TIPS

Supervalu has set up a call center for consumers to call for further information.  The number is 855-731-6018.  Additional information may also be obtained by going to Supervalu’s website, http://www.supervalu.com and go to the Consumer Security Advisory section where information can be obtained about complimentary consumer identify protection services.  Consumers who may have shopped at any of the affected stores should carefully monitor their credit card account for fraudulent use and if you used a debit card, you should strictly monitor your bank account for evidence of fraud.  Establishing a credit freeze at each of the three major credit reporting bureaus is also a good idea.  You can get information as to how to put a credit freeze on your credit report by going to the Credit Freeze section of Scamicide as listed on the right hand side of this page.  Finally, this should again be a lesson to consumers to not use debit cards for retail transactions.  The risk is too great.