US Federal Prosecutors from the District of California indicted over 80 individuals in a roundup of a massive romance scam that extracted more than $46 million from victims. 14 individuals have been arrested, but the rest remain abroad and are out of the reach of the US court system. The ring would lure individual’s in via romance scams perpetuated through popular dating apps and websites. These scams rely on getting financial information from the victim or transferable gift cards that are then transferred to other accounts.
Source: Caught in a bad romance: Feds indict 80 alleged members of romance/BEC scam ring
MasterCard reported a massive data breach to the Belgian and German Data Protection Authorities (DPA) due to a breach of their customer data, which included the loss of customers’ names, payment card numbers, email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, gender, and dates of birth. MasterCard discovered the breach on August 21st, 2019 and has reported that account passwords and card security codes were not included in the exposed data. While this is a comfort to the affected individuals, it’s a small one as the lost information can be used to compromise the associated email address or force a password reset. MasterCard has since requested that any outside vendors delete all information regarding the compromised individuals, which may be an attempt to make their follow-up investigation easier as there are fewer data sources to comb through. MasterCard is offering free credit report monitoring to all those affected by the breach, and we’ll have to wait and see how the DPAs react.
Source: Mastercard Reports Data Breach to German and Belgian DPAs
