attorney general Mark Herring today urged any Virginia residents who have shopped at Target stores or the company’s website to take advantage of the one year of free credit monitoring being offered by the company following last month’s security breach.
“I commend Target for offering credit monitoring to all of its customers, and strongly encourage any affected Virginia customers to take advantage of the monitoring, regardless of whether suspicious activity has appeared on their accounts,” said attorney general Herring. “Consumers should also be vigilant and change their PIN numbers and passwords if they have not already done so. My office is going to work to help ensure Virginians are protected in this matter.”
Target, which has 57 retail stores in Virginia, announced in December that a data breach had given hackers access to the payment card information of approximately 40 million customers across the nation. The stolen information included credit and debit card data, customer names, and PIN numbers. Last week, Target also revealed that hackers had stolen a second batch of data which included the names, mailing addresses, phone numbers or email addresses for up to 70 million people.
Target is offering one year of free credit monitoring to all Target customers, not only those customers who had information compromised in the data breach. Consumers can register for free credit monitoring at creditmonitoring.target.com. Target’s website provides answers to frequently asked questions concerning the credit monitoring at:
https://corporate.target.com/
The free credit monitoring will be offered through Experian’s ProtectMyID. Services will include a copy of a credit report, daily credit monitoring, identity theft insurance (except where prohibited by law) and access to personalized assistance from a fraud resolution agent.
Target has provided the following information for consumers looking to take advantage of this program:
- Consumers who shopped in U.S. stores may request an activation code by entering their name and email address at creditmonitoring.target.com before April 23, 2014.
- Consumers will then receive an email from Target within one to five days that will include the unique activation code and instructions on how to register the code with ProtectMyID.
- Consumers will have until April 30, 2014, to register their code with ProtectMyID.
- Emails collected during the process of creating activation codes will only be used for the purpose of sending an activation code to enroll in free credit monitoring.
Consumers who prefer to receive their activation code by phone should call Target directly at 866-852-8680, then call Experian directly at 888-270-0056 to enroll in credit monitoring. For more information, visittarget.com/databreach or contact Target at 866-852-8680.
If you have any other consumer-related inquiries, the Office of the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Hotline telephone counselors are available to assist you with your consumer questions. Please call the Consumer Protection Hotline at 1-800-552-9963 if calling from Virginia, or 804-786-2042 if calling from the Richmond area.
The Consumer Protection Hotline office hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, except state holidays including Friday, January 17 and Monday, January 20.
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