OK, so this post will be more of a rant than anything else, but I find myself so ticked off about this whole TJX data breach thing that I have to sound off a little bit somewhere.
For those that have not heard, there is a company called TJX that is the parent company for a number of retail outlets such as T.J. Maxx, Bob’s Stores and Home Goods here in the northeast, and perhaps elsewhere for all I know.
Apparently, some computer hackers managed to break into one of TJX’s computer systems and steal a boatload of customer data. The worst part of it is that this data included credit and debit card numbers that TJX had been holding onto for at least three years.
Why in the hell do they need to be holding on to customer’s credit card information at all? Once the sale is complete, the data should be deleted. It’s understandable to want to hold onto things like names, addresses and phone numbers for marketing purposes, but to hold onto credit card information for three years? There is absolutely no reason for that.
And we wonder why some people are paranoid about using the credit cards online? Little do they know that using it on the Internet probably does not expose them to any more risk than using it in person at the store.
That credit card information is going to be processed on computers somewhere and will probably be passed along over the Internet since that’s a lot cheaper than building a private network and we all know how big companies with profits in the millions or billions love to save a few bucks!
This is just another glaring example of corporate America’s disregard for their customers in favor of their own greed, or perhaps this time it is simply carelessness.
Somewhere along the line, some idiot executive decided the company needed to retain customer credit card information in their system. Or perhaps some lazy programmer took a shortcut somewhere and decided it was easier to just retain the credit card info as part of the customer record rather than write a routine to delete it.
As much as I hate to say something like “we need a law” and take the chance of spurring those idiots down in D.C. into action, something clearly needs to be done about this. Something like “customer credit card information must be deleted within 30 days of a completed transaction.”
When I first heard the story about this data breach, I was not terribly concerned about our finances since I did not think we had done business in any of the TJX-owned stores, but that changed when I received a letter from our bank (credit union actually — they are much better than banks!) informing me that they will be issuing new debit cards to us because of this situation.
When I questioned my wife, I discovered that she had done some school shopping down in Massachusetts at a T.J. Maxx store last year. So much for our immunity to this problem.
Since then I have been checking our accounts online at least twice a day and will continue to do so until we get the new debit cards and activate them.
I have heard that there are some class-action lawsuits in the works over this and if I am eligible to take part in any of them, I certainly want in! TJX needs to feel the pain that should result from this kind of stupidity and obvious disregard for their customers. There simply is no excuse for it.
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