From: State Line/The Pew Charitable Trust
By Pamela M. Prah, Staff Writer
The recent data breach at Target highlights the growing role of states in protecting people’s online data and privacy.
Attorneys general in Connecticut, Illinois and New York are leading a multistate investigation into December’s cyberattack at Target, in which hackers stole the payment card numbers of at least 70 million shoppers, along with their names, mailing addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.
The state attorneys general pressed Target to offer one year of free credit monitoring to all customers, even those who were not affected by the data breach. “I would strongly encourage all Target customers to take advantage of this offer,” Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said earlier this week. Jepsen urged shoppers there to change their PIN numbers and passwords, and to “be vigilant when it comes to unsolicited emails and phone calls seeking personal information.”
Attorneys general also are advising customers to be wary of phony websites urging Target shoppers to give up personal information in exchange for gift cards or other compensation for the breach. Many new websites with “Target” in the name, such as “targetcreditfix.com” and “targetsecuritybreach.com” have been registered recently, according to California Attorney General Kamala Harris.
Most states have their own “security breach laws” requiring companies to notify consumers if their credit card numbers have been stolen. The strength of those laws varies, however. Meanwhile, even though federal authorities have launched their own Target investigation, there is no federal law that requires disclosure of security breaches.
“It’s definitely true that there has been a vacuum at the federal level in terms of privacy legislation,” said David Jacobs, an attorney who specializes in consumer protection for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, D.C.
Little Direction from Washington
As Stateline has reported, debates about threats to privacy, ranging from drones to electronic license plate readers, are expected to loom large in statehouses in 2014. Americans’ online activity is increasingly moving from desktops to smartphones and other mobile devices. This shift has created new privacy concerns, but the federal government has provided little direction.
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