Today, Target acknowledged that they had indication of the data breach at the end of last year, but decided that additional action was not warranted. So, basically they received warning that the breach happened, could have stopped it, but chose not to.

During the holiday shopping season, which has to be the worst time for this sort of thing to happen, I found out about the Target data breach and I was affected. It was early on in the breach, when the banks were simply telling people to watch their account activities and not to be alarmed and that they did not need a new card until they had suspicious activity, but I just went ahead and closed my account immediately and requested a new card. Because of the time involved in waiting for the new card to be issued, I had to contact businesses that I had ongoing transactions with and I had to completely restructure my holiday plans. The inconvenience of those aspects of the situation, coupled with the way that the company handled, or attempted to hide the situation, cured me of any need to shop there, regardless of payment method, months ago. I think I was on to something 🙂