It’s been a bad week for credit cards. Last Sunday I received a phone call from CitiBank Fraud Early Warning Department, informing me that they were canceling my CitiCard MasterCard because of a “merchant compromise.” They explained that someone had hacked into a merchant’s database and stolen all their stored credit card information. When I asked who the merchant was they refused to tell me, saying that the information was part of a criminal investigation and couldn’t be released. Apparently, however, my credit card information was part of the compromised database, so I asked them to confirm the recent charges on the card. Sure enough, there was a fraudulent charge from the day before, $30 from Macy’s. CitiBank overnighted me a new card, which arrived yesterday, but that started me thinking. Continue reading →