Regular readers of Scamicide.com may remember that it was just last August 17th that I told you about the hacking at grocery chain Supervalu. Well, it has happened again. Now the company is saying that a second, entirely different hacking and data breach occurred just a few weeks after the previous hacking was discovered that affected customers at some of its Shop ‘n Save, Shoppers Food & Pharmacy and Cub Foods stores as well as some of its liquor stores. Although the company is saying that due to what it calls its “enhanced” security technology installed after the last data breach, it believes that no cardholder data was actually taken by the hackers, it is still too early in the investigation to definitively make that statement. In last Saturday’s USA Today, I wrote a column about the commonality of the data breaches over the last year that you may find interesting. Here is a link to that column:
You can well expect there to be continuing problems at retailers in the weeks and months ahead with data breaches.
TIPS
Specifically for people who think they may have been affected by the most recent Supervalu data breach, you can go to Supervalu’s website for more detailed information. Supervalu’s website is http://www.supervalu.com. They have also established a call center for information about free credit monitoring being offered through the company AllClear ID. You can reach the call center at 855-731-6018. If you receive an email or text message purporting to be from AllClearID or Supervalu asking you to click on a link to access the free credit monitoring services, don’t do so. You can’t be sure that the email or text message is legitimate and all you may end up doing is downloading malware on to your own computer or other electronic device that will enable the identity thief to steal all of the personal information stored on your computer or other personal electronic device and use it to make you a victim of identity theft. Instead go directly to Suprevalu’s true website at http://www.supervalu.com.
For the rest of us who may not be personally affected by this latest data breach, this serves as a reminder that we should not use debit cards when shopping in retail stores because of the greater harm that can come if your debit card is hacked. It also is important to remember to regularly monitor your credit card statement, preferably online to look for fraudulent charges. Remember, when it comes to data breaches, the retail merchants who get hacked are always months behind when the hacking occurred so you need to be monitoring your accounts for improper activity.