It must have been a very serious security breach because my CU sent a letter to everyone who had used their CC at Target. The letter said if we did not block the credit card they would block it after 30 days. The CU has told us before to get a new card because of problems, but never ever said they would block it. I have a new card and the first time I went to Target after that I was a little concerned so I wrote a check. I am sure it has been taken care of by now. Target is my favorite store, even though I spend more at Walmart because of the lower prices.

I received this from Eddie Bauer today. ____________________________ Dear Valued Friends Member, We know you have "opted out" of receiving Friends emails from Eddie Bauer and we will not send you Friends Member emails; however we have important information to share with you about email security. We have been notified by Epsilon, the vendor we use to send emails to our loyalty program members, that some of our customers� email addresses and names were taken during a breach of their system. This breach impacted Eddie Bauer as well as a number of other major retailers and businesses. The email addresses stolen belong to members of our Friends loyalty program, and include the "opt out" email address file. No credit card or financial information is contained in Epsilon�s Eddie Bauer files, and none was taken. Epsilon has assured us they are working with the federal authorities on this incident. Please note, it is possible you may receive unsolicited emails as a result of this breach. Eddie Bauer�s records reflect that you have opted out of receipt of Eddie Bauer Friends emails. If you receive an email that appears to have been sent by Eddie Bauer Friends, please do not respond. Eddie Bauer never requests financial or other sensitive information via email. If you receive an email you suspect is fraudulent, please refer to the "How to Report Abuse" section in the Privacy Policy on our website. If you receive marketing emails purporting to come from Eddie Bauer Friends, please report the emails to us using the "How to Report Abuse" procedures in our Privacy Policy. Please also note, you may have received your Rewards Certificate and our Spring Sale email today. Those are both legitimate emails from Eddie Bauer. We value your trust, and wanted to alert you to this incident as soon as possible. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. Neil Fiske CEO Eddie Bauer

I had a call from a public service research bureau recently, whose principles I support, asking for a donation - not deductible, as they're labelled an "advocacy" group, rather than a "charitable" one. I listened for a bit, and told the person on the phone that, while she appeared to be legit., that to continue the call would not be useful to her, as I never give out card information over the phone. She was from a call centre, not a volunteer directly connected with the organization, by the way - so they'd have got a portion of the proceeds. Do you figure that when you're dealing with credit card info, e.g. checking account balances, changing PIN numbers, online, that your activities are secure?? One credit union charges me $2.00/mo. for account report because I won't let them send my report online. The other doesn't - banks don't (so far): stockbrokers, either. Church pension comes to my account online, gov't. wants to send my gov't. pension online, plus income tax refund ... and there's some talk of them requiring that our income tax be filed online soon. Have you received info online that there's something wrong with your bank account, PayPal account, etc., and to click here to get it straightened out? You're not going to tell me that you did, are you? Granted, such messages are initiated by others, not you, so it makes it somewhat easier for them to play nefarious games with them. ole joyfuelled ... with a bit of assistance in the "joy" department from paying for purchases with cash ... ... well, if not in the "joy" ... would you buy "unworried"?

I just heard from a techy. I asked that since the breach was in 2014 and the cows are out of the barn, why does anyone with a super duper password (versus PASSWORD) need to rush to change their passwords. 1. The theft was of the database of passwords which (if I understand correctly) is different than Joe, Mary, Tom, Dick, Harry and Sue's passwords. 2. Yahoo has to at least look/be/cya responsible. 3. Yahoo, as people have pointed out, has been sliding downhill for a long time, so, ahem, just maybe, they were not going to be spending funds for security experts, technology and white-hat hackers to keep membership info secure. 4. We all know this, but to state the obvious: one needn't enter personal information such as your pet's name, where you were born, your favorite flavor....Get creative and keep a little crib sheet about it. It's true, however, that if you ever run from president of a big important country, and your detractors find out that you fibbed or were not completely truthful about this important information, you could spend eternity assuring voters that you are overall decent, committed and will serve their interests. I think our family might want to overhaul the mongrel email programs we use. So, what's out there that might be reliable? G? Good point about using one's service provider email account then getting essentially locked out of it when you switch carriers. I asked the techy my question of just what percent of their users would 500 million be. Techy said the Yahoo isn't going to let anyone know. Of course.