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from Toronto Star on Wednesday, February 19, 2003

100,000 Amex, MasterCard, Visa holders affected 'Unauthorized intruder' breached U.S. computers.

Tens of thousands of Canadian credit card holders should be on the lookout for suspicious account activity after Visa, MasterCard and American Express confirmed that an "unauthorized intruder" had accessed a third-party computer system holding information on up to 8 million accounts.

Representatives from the three credit card companies could not say whether it was a hacker or an insider who gained access to the sensitive information, including data from more than 100,000 Canadian-issued cards.

The data resided with an American firm that processes card transactions for retailers and other merchants doing business through the Internet. The name of this firm was not disclosed, but the credit card companies said they are working with U.S. authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to track down the culprit and determine the extent of the breach. "If there's something that doesn't seem right, you should be contacting your bank about that," warned Terrie Tweddle, a spokesperson for Visa's operations in Canada.

Tweddle said 60,000 Visa cards belonging to Canadians were exposed to the security breach, amounting to less than 2 per cent of the estimated 3.4 million Visa cards affected.

American Express would not release figures, but a spokesperson from the New York-based company said the numbers would be "significantly less" than those cited by Visa.

MasterCard International estimated that 40,000 Canadian credit card accounts were vulnerable to the breach.

"We have notified our member financial institutions of the accounts involved, so that they may monitor each account for fraud and/or reissue cards as appropriate," said MasterCard, echoing similar comments from Visa.

Initial reports estimated the breach affected 2.2 million accounts, a number that expanded to 5.6 million then 8 million by yesterday afternoon. MasterCard did not explain how it came to the 8 million figure, or what other credit card brands might be included in its count.

Both Visa and MasterCard said they would continue to monitor the situation, but they also emphasized that no fraudulent use of card numbers had been found since they were alerted to the incident in early February.

Visa International, MasterCard and American Express have zero-dollar liability policies, meaning individual consumers are not required to pay up if an unauthorized purchase is made on their credit card account.

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