Discover Card Security Breach?

CANCEL YOUR DISCOVER CARD NOW. I had the same problem. I could not sign on and they said they were sending a new card (without giving a reason). Yet they are STILL HONORING bogus charges on the old number (the one which THEY KNOW has been breached) and expecting me to call them to discuss the matter. I have cancelled my card with them and strongly recommend that everyone do that. Visa, MasterCard and American Express know how to manage their security (they would stop honoring charges to the old number) and they value customers (they would not put the responsibility on ME to fix it). Discover seems to see customers as the product that they wrap and sell to their merchants: They seem to see the merchants as their customers (since they have many fewer merchants than Visa, MasterCard and American Express).

[Jeanie]

I never cared too much for Discover..I prefer Visa over them any day!

~Jeanie

I also had my Discover account canceled so I could no longer use SOAN (Secure Online Account Number) which is the ONLY way I use my Discover Card. The account was moved to a NEW account, but to use SOAN, I had to activate my NEW Discover Credit card which they have not sent me yet. Since I do not use my Discover Card accept via SOAN, how was my card compromised? It seems more likely that my ACCOUNT was compromised since this is what was required to be changed first. It is unfortunate that Discover could not be bother to contact me. Now I also need to change my Quicken account information. What a pain for no gain!!

[Jeanie]

Seems like something new everyday with Discover...ALL bad!!

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.

I was declined using my Discover card the other day for $1400. When I called the CSR said the store was not reading the CSV number correctly and suggested doing the transaction manually. This also failed. I called again and this time the CSR said Discover had declined because of suspected fraud. After proving I was me they authorized the charge. A great inconvenience to me. But NOW IT GETS INTERESTING. I called to learn why this happened and was told that a number of account numbers were compromised in January 2009 and those accounts were marked for hightened security. They recommended that I cancel my card and they would issue a new card. Of course lots of folks out there are marked for this additional security, don't know about it, could get declined and not be able to resolve the issue as quickly as I did.