Up to 200,000 Montgomery Ward Customer Records Hacked

by Tim Stevens, posted Jul 1st 2008 at 11:12AM

Did you do any shopping at the Montgomery Ward online store anytime during the end of last year? If so, we're sorry to inform you that there's a good chance your credit card number was stolen by a group of hackers, and then re-sold online to the highest bidder. What's that -- you didn't receive a notice from the company about the leak? Neither did anyone else, because, as it turns out, Montgomery Ward's Parent Company, Direct Marketing Services, has chosen to try and keep this quiet rather than go the full disclosure route.

According to the Associated Press, Direct Marketing Services was alerted of the leak by Citigroup in December, meaning the company was completely ignorant of the hole in its security. In the months following, the company made no effort to alert those whose numbers were compromised, instead working directly with the card company whose accounts were exposed to issue new accounts. Now that the story has gone public, however, Direct Marketing Services is sending notices to its customers in an attempt to save face -- just a little late. [Source: AP via The Consumerist]

Filed under: Computers

Tags: hackers, leak, montgomery ward, MontgomeryWard, retail, security, shopping

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Galley @ Jul 1st 2008 1:14PM

I thought they went out of business ten years ago!

Neutral

Peter F @ Jul 2nd 2008 9:36AM

I'm with you on that. But apparently they have an online store? Maybe it was a yahoo store?

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