Here are the options that I see.

1) We all shopped at the same online merchant who was breeched (the CSR told me that it was not a breech on the side of discover, he seemed believable, but it is possible that he doesn't know the truth).

2)Discover card had a security breech, possible, as the CSR told me they have literally mailed out thousands of cards and had the bulk of their recent calls lately on this issue. However, several of the people I know who have discover cards did not get a new one issued, so if it was on discover's side, they would have to send one to everyone.

3) Someone at discover cooked up an idea to get us worried and purchase their credit monitoring offer. This to me seems the most likely as if only a small percentage of us decided to purchase this service for $9.99 a month, they would begin to make quite a bit of money. Also, I believe it is not legal for a company to not disclose a breech of their system in which our information could be in someone else's hands. For example, a computer was stolen at a blood drive with my information on it and the blood drive company was required to personally notify everyone and provide at no cost 1yr of credit monitoring system.

Perhaps we are ok and this is just a lame discover scheme, or we all shopped at the GAP or vision direct for contacts online because those are the only online merchants I have used with this card.