Montana Will Receive Nearly $178,600 In Settlement With Target Over Cyber Hack In 2013
Back in November of 2013 a massive cyber hack of Target stores nationwide led to widespread fraud attacks on Target customers. According to Montana Assistant Attorney General Chuck Munson, a large number of Montanans were also attacked.
"We know that info on more than 60 million nationwide was stolen," said Munson. "When you whittle that down to what happened in Montana, the best information that we have is that somewhere between 150,000 and upwards of 200,000 people were affected."
Many victims of the hack didn’t lose any money, but Munson says some Montanans had to fight to get their money back.
"Just to put it into context, we heard about it through actual people having to essentially recoup their money," Munson said. "Credit card companies and banks will often have reimbursement policies in place that make victims whole already. This is how we were hearing about it. There were some people that were victimized regionally here in Montana and they actually had to engage with their banks and credit card companies to be reimbursed."
This week, Target agreed to settle with Montana and other states over the issue. Montana will receive nearly $178,600 from the settlement, which also includes much stricter requirements on how Target must maintain and operate its customer’s information.