Estimate of victims from Global Payments increases dramatically

The estimated number of victims from Global Payments' data breach has grown exponentially - like Bruce Banner growing to Hulk size in this weekend's Avengers movie.  The number of estimated victims more than quadrupled. I previously reported that the estimated number of victims of the data breach was approximately 1.5 million. Now, the estimate stands at 7 million.

The drastic increase is caused by the revelation that the period of time that hackers had access to Global Payments' account information was much longer than originally expected. Originally, the time of exposure was thought to have lasted from January 21 to February 25. Now the breach is thought to have occurred in the previous spring.

As a result, many more people are potentially exposed to identity theft due to the data breach.  If that happens, they will probably be mad enough at Global Payments to turn into their own Hulk.

My initial coverage of this incident can be found here - http://fcralawyer.blogspot.com/search/label/Global%20Payments.

Yet another data breach putting millions of consumers at risk

Global Payments is a company that processes credit card transactions.  It announced late Friday (conveniently near the close of business right before the weekend) that a data breach may have allowed unauthorized access to 1.5 million credit card numbers.  Global Payments would not say what types of credit cards were potentiall affected, but Visa confirmed that the data breach included all of the major players (i.e. Visa, Mastercard, Discover, etc.).

Global Payments also released a statement on Sunday with more details.  Most importantly, according to Global Payments' statement, the data breach did not include cardholders' names, addresses or Social Security numbers.   That should lessen considerably the risk of true name identity theft, but the risk of account take over via the compromised credit card numbers is still present.

SO what should the consumer do?  Same as always - watch your credit card statements for any transactions that you did not make.  If you find one, report it as fraud.  The credit card company should eat the charge and issue you a new card with a new card number.  Considering 1.5 million is only a very small percentage of the estimated one billion credit and debit card numbers being used in the U.S., the chances that this data breach will affect you is slim.