Most of you who might have shopped from GameStop might be aware of the incident that took place almost two months ago in April when the retail giant announced that many of its customers’ credit card information had been hacked and stolen.
What is surprising though, that it is only now that the company is notifying the customers about the breach telling them that their credit card information including the CVV2 numbers has been stolen.
A number of customer accounts compromised
Essentially, GameStop was notified by KrebsOnSecurity that most of their customer accounts had been hacked with attackers stealing private information related to credit cards along with CVV2 numbers. Also, it was reported that hackers were selling this information on a marketplace.
The breach had allegedly occurred between August 2016 and April 2017, but GameStop did not notify its customers regarding the attack at the time.
All it said that it has involved a number of forensic experts to investigate the matter further and that it has notified the relevant legal authorities. It also stated that it had hired an expert cyber security firm to help them identify the perpetrators. Unfortunately, the culprits were never found.
It has not yet been revealed as to how the data was stolen and how many victims have been affected. All that is known is that the number of people whose information has been stolen can be significant.
Customers not happy with GameStop
As you may already know, GameStop is one of the leading retailers in the gaming industry with over 7,500 stores. However, after customers were notified about their credit cards, they did not take it very well.
The problem is that even though GameStop did the right thing notifying its customers regarding the breach, it did so after a very long time. There were customers who complained, all over social media, about being notified through snail mail.
https://twitter.com/NiuHuskieJohn/status/873674229522325504
GameStop close some around 150 stores
GameStop has announced that it will be closing 150 of its stores due to poor performance in sales. Perhaps, this is because news about the breach has been made public and many will be reluctant to purchase anything from GameStop.
However, GameStop needs to look out for itself amidst a fierce competition as customers start switching to Amazon, Walmart and other retail stores in hopes of having their information secured.
Meanwhile, hackers make a fortune
Right now, hackers are trading people’s credit card information for a good sum of money and it is only a matter of time before more of such breaches are seen.
It is advised that online retailers avoid storing CVV2 numbers of their customers’ credit cards so as to prevent any future accidents.
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