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How to find out if you’re a victim of Wawa data breach
Wawa is taking a proactive approach to help customers who may have been affected by a months-long data breach this year that may have compromised credit card information used at any of the convenience store chain’s 850 locations up and down the East Coast.
Following Thursday’s announcement of the breach that was finally contained on Dec. 12, Wawa is offering free, one-year enrollment to Experian IdentityWorks SM to identify detection and resolution of identity theft. Experian IdentityWorks will provide a credit report at signup, credit monitoring and up to $1 million in identify theft insurance.
Free enrollment is active until Feb. 28, 2020, and does not require a credit card.
A Thursday press release from Wawa announced that the data breach was the result of malware that was present at Wawa stores sometime after March 4 on in-store payment processing systems, and present on most store systems on April 22 located located in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Florida.
The corporation’s security team first discovered the malware on Dec. 10 and it was contained on Dec. 12. Credit card payment on gas station pumps was also privy to the data breach.
The information is limited to payment card information, including debit and credit card numbers, expiration dates and cardholder names, but does not include PIN numbers or CVV2 numbers.
Wawa said the breach did not affect card use on
ATMs or lottery machines.
The malware is reported to not be a risk any longer to customers.
Wawa spokeswoman Lori Bruce said Friday she could not say how many customers may have been affected, but, per the Thursday press release, “Wawa is not aware of any unauthorized use of any payment card information as a result of this incident.”
The company is also engaged in leading an external forensics firm to conduct an investigation which allowed Wawa to publicly release the data breach, and is also working with law enforcement to support their ongoing criminal investigation.
“I apologize deeply to all of you, our friends and neighbors, for this incident. You are my top priority and are critically important to all of the nearly 37,000 associates at Wawa,” said Wawa CEO Chris Gheysens. “We take this special relationship with you and the protection of your information very seriously. I can assure you that throughout this process, everyone at Wawa has followed our longstanding values and has worked quickly and diligently to address this issue and inform our customers as quickly as possible.”
A full list of FAQ’s and breach details are available at www.wawa.com/ alerts/data-security. This site may be used to access Experian IdentityWorks enrollment.