Brian Krebs originally posted yesterday that Target is investigating a data breach. Today Target confirmed that 40 million credit and debit card accounts may have been impacted between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, 2013! Ouch. As the impact is so wide, it would either be an inside job or the internal servers were breached.

What should you do if you were on of those that shopped and bought something at Target recently?

  • Check your online statements for unknown charges. If you report a charge in a timely manner, the card company will not likely hold you accountable for the charge. But do check up on it because the longer a charge goes without question, the more likely you will be responsible for some dollar amount.
  • Replace the card. Call up the company and request new numbers.
  • Enable the fraud alert on credit companies
  • Create an Identity Theft Report with the Federal Trade Commission

Even if you weren’t impacted, this is a good reminder to check your credit scores and make sure everything is accounted for. Annual Credit Report gets it to you free due to Federal Law.