A security breach at a major credit card company is leaving some Tri-Staters wondering if they'll have to pay a price.
The breach let customers from across the country see private information about each other.
Customer Constance Wilson of Indianapolis says, “I was shocked because I didn't know what to think."
Wilson recently went online to pay her Aspire Visa credit card bill. But when she pulled up her account, she also pulled up 119 other people’s statements, complete with their names, addresses and full credit card numbers.
"I kind of got scared a little,” Wilson says, “because I was thinking, 'If I have their information, they probably have mine.'"
She was right. She'd stumbled onto a problem she now shared with people all over the United States, including Tim Lee of Cincinnati, who told us he was "upset."
Matthew Jones, of Florence, Kentucky was dumbfounded when we knocked on his door to deliver the news. He said he’d call the credit card company immediately.
The Aspire cards had been closed recently to new purchases but still carried continuing balances. The company that ran the Aspire program, CompuCredit, is based in Atlanta. The director of corporate communications, Tom Donahue, blames a "computer processing error."
He says, "Records were merged into one file instead of stand-alone" records. The company has pulled online viewing of statements until it can fix the problem. And it's apologizing to customers like Shervonne Johnson of Atlanta.
She's glad her account was closed but still fears her information being out there. "That's very dangerous because nowdays with the economy and everything, someone could be desperate enough to do practically anything."
Wilson says "It's personal information that no one should have, especially not a stranger... People should know this is a possibility. This could happen to you."
CompuCredit says it's doing everything it can to make sure the same problem doesn't occur to any more of its 75 million customers. The company says it's not sure how long the information was out there, accessible to the customers in this program only, but beyond its apology, it's changing all the account numbers for these customers and is offering to enroll them free of charge to a yearlong fraud monitoring service.
You can protect yourself. Review your account statements regularly. Get credit reports at least once a year.
Here’s a link where they may be free. And shred statements and billing information before you put them in the trash.
