Target Corporation is offering a free one-year enrollment in a credit monitoring service in response to customer concerns about a data breach at the upscale discount store with four locations in the Metro East.
The credit monitoring service, ProtectMyID, from Experian, is available to all guests who shopped in U.S. stores, Target said. Customers can enroll in the service at creditmonitoring.target.com. After providing a full name and email address, an activation code, with further instructions will be provided in 1-5 days.
Customers have until April 23 to request a code and until April 30 to register with Experian. ProtectMyID offers protection through credit monitoring, a scan of online resources where compromised credit and debit card numbers, Social Security numbers and other personal data is found, traded or sold and monitoring address changes at the national and credit report levels, according to the ProtectMyID website.
There is no automatic re-enrollment in ProtectMyID after the initial one-year period. Enrollment does not exclude a customer from future legal action Molly Snyder, a Target spokesperson, said.
“The only requirement from Target is a name and email address to send an activation code,” Snyder said. “After that, guests are subject to any standard Experian terms.”
Target announced on Dec. 19 that approximately 40 million credit and debit card accounts may have been compromised between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, 2013. It was later determined that encrypted PIN data was taken. The PIN data, Target said, would be of no use to the thieves because the key for decryption was not in Target’s system. Debit card information, Target assured customers, is safe.
On Jan. 10, the company announced that up to 70 million customers may have had names, mailing addresses, phone numbers or email addresses stolen. The customers in the two groups are distinct, but there may be some overlap. The extent of the overlap is not yet known, Snyder said.
The Minneapolis based company has not disclosed how the information was obtained. In an open letter to newspapers across the country, Target Chairman, President and CEO, Gregg Steinhafel said the company had closed the access point that the criminals used, removed the malware and hired a team of data security experts to investigate the breach. The company has repeatedly assured customers that they will incur no liability for the cost of any fraudulent charges arising from the breach.
Sales at the 1,797 Target stores in the United States and online, were better than expected before the Dec. 19 announcement, the company said. Sales declined 2-6% for the remainder of 2013. Sales have improved recently, Target said.
