Credit monitoring is not the solution
by. Ron Shevlin
In the wake of the Target data breach, the retailer announced that it would provide credit monitoring from Experian to the customers affected by the breach.
With the number of consumers impacted by the breach now at 70 million, Target might be wise to do two things:
- Just acquire Experian (or some other credit monitoring firm) altogether, as the amount they will have to pay out for the service might make an acquisition a more attractive alternative.
- Change its name.
Enough advice for Target. It doesn’t deserve my help. It took me five days to get through to them to cancel my Target card. Nope, couldn’t do it online, and couldn’t even do it in-store. Screw you Target for causing me to waste so much time trying to get through to you. And oh yeah, thanks for not responding to any of my tweets. If Hillary Clinton can have a hate list, so can I. And Target is on it.
The real advice in this blog post is for banks and credit unions.
Sorry that falls on you bankers and credit unionistas to do this, but you guys are the ones who will have to provide some consumer education here.
Specifically, on the differences between credit monitoring and transaction monitoring. Credit monitoring is good, and it’s needed, but it isn’t anywhere near a complete solution to protecting consumers’ card-related information.
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