Data Security

After announcing PIN pads in some of its U.S. stores showed signs of tampering last month, Michaels was hit with lawsuits seeking class-action status. Three customers from Northern Illinois filed suits against the arts and crafts retailer claiming the company failed to take reasonable measures to protect its customers.

I often check the clickthough rates of our daily e-newsletter of aggregated and orignal content, ROI Report, to gauge what our audience of cross-channel retailers are interested in and concerned about. Lately, the clickthrough rates for articles about hackers and scammers targeting retailers and shoppers are through the roof

Michaels has removed the PIN pad tampering threat from its U.S. stores and believes it's identified the time frame that customer information was exposed. Based on the latest information available, exposed PIN pad transactions occurred from Feb. 8 through May 6, the date Michaels disabled the tampered devices.

After reporting that PIN pads in some of its Chicago-area stores had been tampered with, Michaels has confirmed additional PIN pads showing signs of tampering in stores throughout 20 states. The crafts retailer identified roughly 90 individual PIN pads in its 964 U.S. stores that showed signs of tampering.

Less than a month after the major security breach at Epsilon, Best Buy learned on April 22 that some of its customer email addresses were hacked from an unnamed third-party vendor.

<span class="articleLocation">Children's Place said its customer database has been hacked. Clients were sent an unauthorized email directing them to a website where they were asked to enter their credit card numbers for a software upgrade. The company notified customers about the hacking through an email.

Best Buy, TiVo and Walgreens are the latest in a string of companies hacked over the weekend. Fraudsters gained access to customers’ files, including email addresses. Epsilon, the communications provider of the companies, issued a brief statement saying “a full investigation was under way” of the breach of some customer client data was discovered.

Online vintage and craft marketplace Etsy recently sparked outrage after the site's buyers suddenly discovered that their feedback posts, purchases, user profiles and, in some cases, real names and email addresses had been made public and searchable.

Consumers need to feel secure with each transaction they conduct on Facebook, or retailers might as well forget about building storefronts on the social site. Adgregate Markets, which provides transactions through ShopFans, and security software maker Symantec, plan to announce a partnership Tuesday relying on Symantec's VeriSign Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates.

Who hasn't been reeled in by the lure of a money-back rebate, reducing the purchase price of that new dishwasher or refrigerator you need? The process sounds so simple, too: Just fill out a rebate form, mail it back with a proof of purchase, then sit back and wait for the check to arrive in the mail. At least so it seems.