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Remember the huge data breach that happened at Target late last year? Yes, the one where their POS system was hacked and customer’s names,... Target Data Breach Much Worse Than First Thought…

Remember the huge data breach that happened at Target late last year? Yes, the one where their POS system was hacked and customer’s names, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. were freely handed over to criminals. Yes, the same one that pretty much made every person who’d physically shopped at a Target store vulnerable to an attack. Finally, yes – the same one that prompted Target to offer a year of identity theft protection to their many guests who thought they might’ve been affected by the data breach. Well, it turns out it’s much worse than we first thought.

It turns out it wasn’t just Target that was affected – in fact, the Department of Homeland Security as well as the Secret Service believe that the same hacking affected over 1,000 other stores in the United States. Here’s how the New York Times describes their findings:

‘The attacks are much more pervasive than previously reported, and hackers are pilfering the data of millions of payment cards from American consumers without companies knowing about it, according to a new Department of Homeland Security advisory released Friday afternoon.”

Target Data Breach Much Worse Than First Thought...

As a result of this news, it’s probably a good idea to thoroughly look over your credit card statements with a fine-toothed comb checking for anything out of the ordinary. While I don’t have a proper list of all of the stores affected by the hack, it’s still a good idea to check your statements anyway.

Have you been affected by this massive data breach? If so, let us know in the comments section below.

[Image via NorthlandsNewsCenter]

SOURCE: Gizmodo