BPI - Credit Card "Data Incident"

[Cold Spring]

So on last Thursday I received a call from one of our credit card banks, following up on suspect charges that were flagged by its computer system. The security agent asked us about 3 charges and if we made them earlier that day? Answers: no, no, no. Two were made at a Wal Mart and one at another place, its name didn't ring a bell.

The bank agent then told us our CC info must have been compromised and they'd cancel the card and re-issue new ones with a different number of course. Wife and I wondered how that happened and narrowed it to only two internet vendors where we’d used that CC in the previous week or so. One of them was Ballistic Products and that shipment arrived on Friday.

Today we received an email from BPI on a "Data Incident" and I've copied the pertinent info below. FYI in case you bought something from BPI recently.

> The purpose of this email is to make you aware of a data incident experienced by one of our third-party vendors that may have resulted in the disclosure of payment card information of some of our customers. The vendor of this service has launched an independent investigation with the help of national cybersecurity experts. At this time, we have received only limited information as the vendor’s investigation remains ongoing. BPI and our vendor take the security and privacy of your information very seriously and regret any inconvenience this may cause you.

Our vendor has informed us that it is working with the payment card brands and law enforcement authorities to better understand the scope of this incident. We were notified that payment card brands may be cancelling and re-issuing certain payment cards. Please note that BPI does NOT directly collect or store payment card data in our own computer system. We employ and rely on offsite vendors to safeguard this data. Accordingly, we do not yet have access to the information required to determine which specific cards were impacted and, therefore, we are unable to provide any additional information about those impacted at this time. We anticipate receiving more information from the vendor concerning specific customers who may have been impacted, and we will notify those individuals upon receiving such information.

We appreciate your patience in the coming weeks as our vendor and industry experts work through this complex situation.

Sincerely,
Ballistic Products