Simon Says – Musings of a Technology CTO

For those who were included in the January 2007 94 million record loss of credit card numbers from TJX (Still the highest loss by number of records ever reported), You may be interested to know that they have agreed a settlement with the 41 various states on the fine. Around $5.5 million of the settlement was for data and consumer protection, and $1.75 million to reimburse the states costs of the investigation.

You can read the details of the deal struck with the FTC from their website.

Lynn Ducey reported that

Arizona and 40 other states will share in the settlement, which includes $5.5 million for data protection and consumer protection and $1.75 million to reimburse the costs and fees of the investigation.

The remaining $2.5 million will go to a Data Security Trust Fund to be used to enforce and develop policy for data security and the protection of consumer information.

Associated Press reports that a total of $9.75 million will be distributed (a tad over a buck a record), The list of participating states is:

Alabama ($59,000), Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri ($67,423), Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey ($431,609), New Mexico, New York, North Carolina ($108,000), North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon ($288,000), Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington ($54,000), West Virginia, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.

This is on top of the up to $40.9 million payment to Visa USA Inc. from back in November 2007, which went to compensate Visa for the fraud its customers were subject to. Visa also fined the bank (Fifth Third) who were responsible for the transaction $880,000 “for not requiring its merchents to meet current security standards”.

Additionally, TJX will be compensating individuals who can proove they spent time sorting this out – at $10 per hour. If consumers incurred costs of more than $60,  you get two $30 TJX vouchers, otherwise you just get one $30 voucher.

TJX have capped the cost of this program to $7 million, so if more than that is claimed, the value will drop accordingly.

Total fines so far? A whopping $57,530,000 and counting.