Class action bank lawsuit against TJX: When the levee breaks

Well this may have seemed inevitable, but the uneasy truce between retail vendors and merchant banks (credit card providers) has broken. Banks are gearing up a massive class action suit against TJX, the parent company of TJ Maxx, which recently revealed the shocking extent of the break-in which resulted in the theft of 45 million credit card numbers and other data from their network. Forty million credit card numbers were stolen over a period of two years or more by crackers who had extensive access to systems handling sensitive data throughout that time. Investigations of consumer fraud revealed a pattern of exposure at TJ Maxx stores, leading in turn to discovery of the break-in.

Banks Hit TJ Maxx Owner With Class-Action Law Suit

This is an interesting decision on the part of the banks, as the financial industry may one day find themselves on the receiving end of similar class action law suits brought about by other banks or consumer groups when data theft can be traced back to their own security foibles.

In fact, the TJX event became the largest on record to date by displacing the 2005 cracking of CardSystems Solutions, a credit card transaction processing company who suffered a network intrusion which exposed 40 million credit card accounts. (Regulators Start Inquiry in Data Loss)

If it keeps on rainin' levee's goin' to break
If it keeps on rainin' levee's goin' to break
When The Levee Breaks, got no place to stay.
-- Led Zeppelin

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