Tech giant Cisco says cyber criminals are attacking the cash register in order to get valuable personal information about consumers. Point-of-sale systems, which manage inventory, credit card numbers and things like loyalty cards are a prime target because of the wealth of information available.
And it’s not like you have to be a computer genius to attack. As I told you in a previous article, crooks can purchase ready-made programs to put to work stealing information from consumers and these pieces of malware are getting more and more sophisticated. You probably remember last year when Target was hacked and many of their customers saw fraudulent charges on their cards.
What can you do? In this case the ball is in the court of the places you shop. Ask if their system is secure and check your bills frequently for any suspicious activity. In case you were wondering, here at WorldStart, we don’t store customer credit card information on our servers, all of that information is transmitted directly to the credit card processor at the time of purchase.
~ Cynthia
Along this same line, if Russian hackers have stolen password info, as well as other personal info, for a billion+ people, how is it that changing passwords on accounts will protect me?
Kathy:
Well, they don’t have your new password and at least security professionals are aware of the hack and can take steps to block it. It’s slightly better protection than doing nothing.