The Golden 1 Credit Union announced Tuesday that it has identified 67,000 cardholders who may have been affected by the security breach at Target Corp. stores.
The Sacramento-based credit union is alerting those members and will issue them new cards as a security move.
“Golden 1 is proactively replacing all potentially impacted cards,” said Donna Bland, president and CEO of Golden 1 Credit Union. “The safety and security of our members’ accounts is a top priority for us. It’s important for our members to know they can rely on Golden 1 to protect their accounts.”
Affected cardholders can use existing cards until the new cards are delivered. Golden 1 is not imposing daily purchasing or cash withdrawal limits as other banks have done for fear that such changes would hurt members during the holiday shopping season. Golden 1 plans to mail out new cards as quickly as possible.
Last week, Target Corp. announced that it suffered a data breach potentially affecting as many as 40 million customers who used credit or debit cards to make purchases at its stores between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15. The stolen information included customer names, card numbers, expiration dates and security codes from Target store cards and major credit card brands such as Visa and MasterCard.
Golden 1 is the seventh largest credit union in the country and has more than 650,000 members. The credit union has 1,370 employees and 82 branches in California, located as far south as El Centro and as far north as Redding.
Scott Ingram, vice president of public relations for Golden 1, said the credit union started identifying members who may have been affected last week after the breach was announced.
“We are not aware of any of our cards having fraudulent transactions at this point,” he said.
However, Golden 1 members are being urged to check their accounts regularly for unusual charges or purchases, and to report any suspicious activity immediately.
“We have a large percentage of our members who use our online and mobile banking services, which is great for daily account monitoring,” said Ingram.
“We also like to encourage mobile and text alerts. Whenever a transaction is conducted on the card that has alerts linked to it, you’ll receive an alert. Members can sign up for that and it’s all free.”
Members can learn more about the breach and what the credit union is doing about it on the credit union’s website: www.Golden1.com. Suspicious activity on accounts should be reported to the Golden 1 by calling the service member contact number: (916) 732-2900
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