Pass the Hand Grenade

The picture of legal liability continues to shift around ID theft. First the banks moved laibility to retailers by adopting chip and pin. Now news comes that retailers are slipping liability by pointing to technology providers as the source of weakness...vendors need a clear strategy if they are to avoid getting saddled with the blame, as well as the cost of this crime... This, just in...from e-paynews Liability For Retail Data Breaches Is Contentious Retail IT firms are closely watching recent cases in which US merchants are arguing that credit card security breaches on their systems occurred because software retained and did not purge the details. BJ’s Wholesale Club is suing IBM for damages after up to 40,000 credit cards were exposed on its systems before or during March 2004, which caused the retailer to allocate USD 16 million to cover its losses. Fraudulent card charges resulting from the breach were included in the suit against IBM, which argues that its contract limits its liability for any leaked customer data.