It seems that every day there is a new data breach announced in the news. Unfortunately, today retailers are not held to the same federal data protection standards as credit unions. As such, thieves can steal and re-sell your information by accessing it through a merchant.

If it seems like you are hearing more about data breaches in the news, it’s because they are on the rise. Unfortunately, data breaches have continuously been an issue over the past few years. The number of compromised records jumped 350% in the last decade, to a total of nearly 180 million records.

In 2017, 1,579 data breaches occurred in the U.S., a 44% increase from 2016. More breaches occurred in 2017 by the business community than breaches in the healthcare industry and government combined. (Read more about the problem here).  

When a data breach occurs, the merchants are not required to pay the costs to send individuals their new cards and generally pay none of the fraudulent charges incurred on their accounts. In fact, when merchants are responsible for the breach, they are rarely required to pay any costs incurred by others.

Credit unions and banks like Christian Financial bear the brunt of these costs after a merchant data breach, even though we (and members like you) had nothing to do with it. Ultimately, members lose out when credit unions lose money from data breach costs.

Right now, merchants can shift most of the costs of their data breaches to others. So, there is no incentive for them to spend the time and money to increase their data security. That's wrong for consumers and it's bad for our economy.

That's why Christian Financial and other credit unions across the country are working together to improve protections for consumers who are victims of merchant data breaches.

We're calling on Congress  to step up and protect credit union members.
I hope you'll consider lending your voice to this important effort.  Please click on this link to learn more about the problem and send an email to your representatives in Congress. When we work together, we can make real change to help guard your information and prevent the hassle and expense of data breaches.

For you and because of you,