Because we used one of our credit cards at Target during the compromised period, I had been watching my statement online. No problems so far.

WATE had a story about credit card fraud and it reminded me I should check my statement again. I tried to log in, and it said the information I entered didn't match their records. I tried again, no luck. I had the Mrs. read all the numbers to me slowly while I typed. Still no luck. I called the 800 number and tried putting in all the numbers a fourth time, and still no luck.

I finally managed to get a live person, and she checked my account. Sure enough, my credit card had been flagged for a "mass data breach event" or something like that. She said it didn't mean my card had been fraudulently used, just that it was exposed. She said they had mailed me a new one Monday, but I haven't gotten it yet. She checked some recent transactions and everything looked OK.

That got me to thinking. Who is paying to reissue the 70 million credit cards exposed by the Target breach? That's got to be a massive expense. Is Target paying for it?

And just as an observation, online credit card transactions seem more secure than in-person transactions these days. We have one credit card that we use exclusively for online purchases. It hasn't been compromised in many years. (Knock on wood).

The other main card that we use in-person (the one we used at Target) has been compromised at least three times in that same timeframe, maybe more. Once was, I'm 99% certain, at a rural gas station in SE Tennessee. May have had a skimmer on the pump, or an employee just got it from their logs or something.

Another time we were on a weeks-long road trip to New England and the card stopped working. We called the credit card company and their software had noticed unusual activity so they blocked it. (Thankfully we had other cards.) Someone had bought plane tickets, Eurail passes, and dating site memberships, among other things. (The last one was hard to explain to the Mrs., but the credit card issuer backed me on that.)

Now there's this reissue presumably because of the Target breach.

At other times, they have sent reissued cards out of the blue before the current one had expired without any explanation.

I guess the moral of the story is to just pay cash for everything. Or shop online whenever you can.