TAD Gear Database Theft

Like many of you, we’re all card carrying members of the TAD Gear fan club, and to hear their database was illegally accessed was shocking to say the least.

We wanted to post this important information here to alert those who potentially had their personal information compromised.

Here’s the formal announcement from TAD via their Web site:

This notice is to inform our customers of a security incident at TAD Gear. We recently learned that our database was illegally accessed from an external source, and it appears that some customer data were taken, which may include customer names, contact information and credit card data. The possibility of a security breach came to our attention when certain customers notified us that unauthorized charges had appeared on their credit cards. Upon learning of the potential breach of security, TAD Gear immediately initiated an investigation, and took corrective steps based on the advice of an internet security firm. We have also contacted law enforcement.

If you purchased merchandise from TAD Gear on-line between August 6, 2009 and November 16, 2009, and the credit card used to purchase that merchandise is still valid, in order to protect yourself from the possibility of identity theft or misuse of your credit card information, we recommend that you immediately contact the issuer of that credit card and close your account. Tell them that your account may have been compromised. If you want to open a new account, ask your credit card issuer to give you a PIN or password, as this will help control access to the account.

In addition, we recommend that you place a fraud alert on your credit files. A fraud alert lets creditors know to contact you before opening new accounts. Just call any one of the three credit reporting agencies at a number below. This will let you automatically place fraud alerts with all of the agencies. You will then receive letters from all of them, with instructions on how to get a free copy of your credit report from each.

Experian 888-397-3742

Equifax 866-640-2273

TransUnion 877-701-5276

When you receive your credit reports, look them over carefully. Look for accounts you did not open. Look for inquiries from creditors that you did not initiate. And look for personal information, such as your home address and Social Security number, which is not accurate. If you see anything you do not understand, call the credit reporting agency at the telephone number on the report.

If you do find suspicious activity on your credit reports, call your local police or sheriff’s office and file a police report of identity theft. Get a copy of the police report. You may need to give copies of the police report to creditors to clear up your records. Even if you do not find any signs of fraud on your reports, we recommend that you check your credit report every three months for the next year. Just call one of the numbers above to order your reports and keep the fraud alert in place.

For more information on identity theft, we suggest that you visit the web site of the California Office of Privacy Protection at www.privacy.ca.gov, or the Federal Trade Commission at www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft. If there is anything TAD Gear can do to assist you, please email us at [email protected], a special email address that we have set up to help answer your questions.

On a going-forward basis, in order to help assure the security of your information, all users will be required to recreate their usernames and change passwords upon logging onto our newly redesigned, TAD Gear website. Please note that the password change process is only initiated when you come to the TAD Gear website and as a result an email is sent to you. Do not respond to any other unsolicited emails regarding password changes from TAD Gear. TAD Gear will not contact you by email regarding a password change unless you initiate such a change on the TAD Gear website in accordance with the instructions above.

We are sorry for any inconvenience that this might have caused you. We take the protection of our customers’ personal information very seriously. TAD Gear is making additional, significant investments in enhancing the safety and security features on our website so that you may feel confident using it. While no company can completely prevent unauthorized access to data, we are committed to ensuring that our data is protected by the highest levels of security.

If you have any questions or need further information regarding this incident, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Hat tip to Soldier Systems for reporting this important information today.

Update 11/20/09 an email has just gone out to TAD’s Mailing List with the above information.