There was a massive data breach suffered by Wawa, a convenience store chain of more than 850 stores around the country. Wawa had recently disclosed that it had suffered a data breach that went undiscovered for nine months in which credit and debit numbers, card expiration dates and cardholders' names were stolen by hackers.
In response to the data breach, the CEO of Wawa issued a detailed letter to affected customers in which you can find the information to activate free credit monitoring offered by Wawa. For more information on the letter from the CEO, you can access that here.
Now a lawsuit seeking class action status has been filed on behalf of affected Wawa customers by the law firm of Chimicles, Schwartz, Kriner & Donaldson-Smith who allege in their lawsuit that the data breach was the result of Wawa's "inadequate data security measures and cavalier approach to data security." If you shopped at a Wawa store during 2019 you may wish to consider joining the class action.
This data breach is a lesson to us all to carefully monitor our credit card statements for indication and fraudulent use. If you find that your card has been used by a hacker, you should immediately report it to your credit card company. While federal law allows credit card companies to hold you responsible for fraudulent charges on your credit card to a maximum of $50, I have never heard of a credit card company that ever held a customer responsible for any amount of fraudulent charges promptly reported.
This is also a good time remind you to refrain from ever using your debit card for anything other than an ATM card because the laws do not protect you from fraudulent use of your credit card to the extent that you are protected when using your credit card. Potentially you risk losing the entire bank account tied to your debit card if you do not promptly report any fraudulent use. New school security awareness training can also make a big difference in preventing future attacks from the bad guys.
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