June 17th, 2008

Bank of America check card data compromised

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 5:02 am

Categories: E-commerce, General, Security

Tags: Bank Of America Corp., Card, Larry Dignan

Bank of America says that some of the information from its check cards have been compromised.

In a letter to customers–I was one of them–Bank of America said:

We have learned that information from certain Bank of America Check Cards may have been compromised. Your Check Card number may have been part of this compromise. To ensure that your privacy is protected to the best of our ability we have taken the following steps:

• As a measure of added security we have issued you a replacement Bank of America check Card. It is included with this letter.
• Your old card will be closed within 30-days of this letter.
• We will monitor activity on your Bank of America account; if we detect any suspicious transactions we will notify you immediately.

From there, Bank of America tells you to activate the new card, check recurring payments and destroy the old card. And last but not least monitor your account.

Bank of America closes with “we understand that some of these steps may pose an inconvenience to you” and the bank says it “is working hard to keep your financial information secure.”

I’ll call to see how many other card numbers were compromised beyond mine. One annoyance: After you activate your card Bank of America pitches you on a privacy protection service. That’s a bit tacky given that Bank of America compromised your data in the first place.

Update: A Bank of America spokeswoman wouldn’t put a figure on how many accounts may have been compromised. She did say the following:

This was not a breach of the bank’s systems. Sometimes we are notified by the card associations. If a card is compromised at third party we notify the customer and replace the card.

The spokeswoman wouldn’t disclose the third party where the breach occurred.