Information on 650,000 Card Holders Lost
It took GE Money two months to reconstruct the missing tape and identify the people whose information was lost. Since December, the company has been notifying consumers in batches of several thousand and telling them to phone a call center set up to deal with the breach. The notification is expected to be completed next week.
Personal information on about 650,000 customers of J.C. Penney and up to 100 other retailers could be compromised after a computer tape went missing. GE Money, which handles credit-card operations for Penney and many other retailers, said Thursday night that the missing information includes Social Security numbers for about 150,000 people.
The information was on a backup computer tape that was discovered missing last October. It was being stored at a warehouse, and was never checked out but can’t be found, either, said Richard C. Jones, a spokesman for GE Money, part of General Electric Capital Corp.
