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September 5, 2014 - Not a week seems to go by without another data breach, but by any measure the past two weeks have been somewhat extraordinary. There have been a number of high profile breaches that consumers need to be aware of.
Dairy Queen - Last week the company announced that it had been the victim of hackers who apparently were able to gain access to some of the company's customer data. The company is saying that a limited number of its stores were affected but that the hackers were able to access credit card numbers and other personal information.
The company has said that as a result of the breach, some of its stores will stop accepting credit cards and move to cash-only transactions.
Home Depot - This breach is somewhat interesting because the company has not been able to confirm that its data was actually hacked. The reason that a breach is suspected comes from banks. A number of banks have been investigating a massive credit card database that is being marketed to crooks on the internet. The banks are saying that they believe that the source of the database is Home Depot.
The company is working with law enforcement agencies to determine if it has actually been victimized. Until then, anyone who has shopped at a Home Depot store in the past few months should be checking their bank and credit card statements closely for fraudulent activity.
Healthcare.gov - OK, we have to start this one out by saying, "We told you so!"
The White House made the announcement that the site had been hacked. According to their statement, hackers were able to gain access to a test server and place malware on it. An official report claims that there was no consumer data stored on the server, but those reports may be inaccurate.
The initial report on the breach was reported in the Wall Street Journal. The author of the report was told, "Investigators found no evidence that consumers’ personal data were taken or viewed during the breach." What they didn't say was that the server didn't contain this information. That alone is troubling.
More troubling still is that the site still has a number of security flaws in it that haven't been plugged. That means it is quite possible that there have been other undetected breaches of the site.
Any consumer who has registered on Healthcare.gov or any of the sixteen state run exchanges should be looking at their bank and credit card statements closely. Even if this breach didn't result in the release of personal information, we believe that it is only a matter of time before there is a much more serious breach of these sites.
byJim Malmberg
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Identity Theft 
