On Saturday, I was out shopping and had made several purchases with my Discover card. When I was checking out at Menards with a rather large purchase, my card was declined. I had just used the card 3 two hours earlier, and I knew that there was no way that I had exceeded my credit limit. I immediately called the number on the back of the card, and after punching in part of my account number and other identifiers, I was immediately routed to the Fraud department. The rep there was able to tell me all the purchases that I had made that day, and was aware that my card had just been declined. He advised that my account was on a security freeze because it was believed that my account number had been disclosed and that my account needed to be closed immediately and that new cards were being issued and I would receive them in a couple of days. I really wasn't given any choice about the matter.

The rep attempted to authorize the purchase that had just been declined, but after two more failed attempts, I was embarrassed enough that I just pulled out my Visa to charge it there.

When I got home, I was unable to access any of my account information on the Discover web site - they had definitely closed my account.

I was on the phone today for ~45 minutes with the Discover Fraud department trying to get an answer as to where this supposed breach occurred. Most of this time was sitting on hold waiting to be escalated to a supervisor, and then the manager. The manager agreed to submit a request to the head office for an explanation on the security breach. As I told her, I believe that I have a right to know where this breach occurred so I can decide whether I want to continue to do business with that vendor.

Time will tell whether I get a response. In my conversations, I got the impression that this had happened to a lot of people. I won't be surprised if there is a news story about it in the next couple of days.