Sunday, January 11, 2009

5 Million CheckFree Consumers Warned Against Identity Theft Exposure

With the new year's first major security breach, CheckFree issued
a consumer disclosure recently warning more consumers were
negatively impacted than originally thought.

Computer hackers operating in the Ukraine effectively redirected
CheckFree's web traffic to illegal computer servers.

"...because the company lost control of its Web domains, it
doesn't know exactly who was hit. And so it must warn a
much larger number of customers."

While there are indications the exposure could have been much
worse, consumers should be wary as CheckFree holds a significant
reach within the banking community for bill payment services:

"...wouldn't say what banks were affected by the hack, but
the majority of these five million customers were CheckFree's
own users, she said. In total, about 42 million customers
access CheckFree's bill payment site..."

So, our tip for today is to contact your bank immediately if you
are a user of CheckFree's bill payment services. Find out if your
accounts exhibit any potentially fraudulent activity.

Finally, as major identity theft security breaches such as this one
tend to further develop over time, check back with us for updates
as we continue to provide free, anonymous tips to prevent id theft.

2 Comments:

At 8:38 AM, Blogger Not HER Again said...

Good catch. Actually there are warnings all over the place that 2009 could be the worst year yet for ID theft and this could point out one problem: it's virtually impossible for any financial institution to detect every instance of "unusual" activity without the input of the person who would know what unusual activity was--the account holder.

Personally my feeling is that people must take responsibility for watching their own accounts at the same time that their financial institutions are taking measures to stop ID leaks. Let's hope these measures really start to work this year.

Thanks for posting this.

 
At 9:40 PM, Blogger agent99 said...

CrazyChick said...

Good catch.
---

Thank you very much for your kind words of encouragement.

It is always very heart warming to hear that our efforts are appreciated in making a positive difference in the lives of our valued readers.

Stay tuned for more Identity Theft Secrets...

 

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