After a recent online purchase, I noticed some strange activity on my Mastercard. Further investigation on my part led me to discover a series of fraudulent purchases made in my name. How had thieves even gotten my financial information? I made my purchase through a secure website, but that wasn't the problem. Instead, the security breach was through the site that fulfills their purchase orders, Shumsky.

A few days (and several hundred dollars) later, I received this email from Shumsky:

Dear Rayna Battle:

Re: Card ending in 3967
On May 16, 2013, Shumsky was notified by its e-commerce platform provider that on May 14, 2013, an unauthorized third party accessed the e-commerce platform and accessed nearly 1,400 of Shumsky cardholder records. We understand our service provider patched the vulnerability the very next day, on May 15. We have engaged with proper security advisors and technical experts to rectify the situation; however, as a result of the incident, we are writing to you to make you aware that your credit/debit card information might have been accessed by an unauthorized party. This information included your name, address, email, credit/debit card number, expiration date, and CVV code. Shumsky does NOT collect PINs for debit cards, SSNs, dates of birth or driver’s license numbers thus this type of sensitive information was not involved.

Shumsky regrets this incident, has immediately engaged with technical and legal advisors to work through the situation, and put in place updated measures to prevent this from happening again. Shumsky is also working with the payment card brands concerning the specific payment cards at issue in this incident. Nevertheless, we recommend that you monitor your payment card account for potential unauthorized charges and alert your financial institution to monitor or potentially cancel and reissue you a new card as they determine is prudent.

If you have further questions, please contact Shumsky at 1-800-414-8946 or 937-221-7103 between 8am and 5pm Eastern Time.

Additionally, we have enclosed information on steps you can take to further protect your information. Please go to: http://www.shumsky.com/cardinfo.html to see the details.

Shumsky takes this matter very seriously and deeply regrets any inconvenience or concern that this matter may cause you.

Sincerely,

Anita Emoff
President
Shumsky, 811 E. 4th Street, Dayton, OH 45402

Hopefully this notification will help you to stop fraud in its tracks, before it costs you too much.