Skip Navigation
BlackBerry Blog

How Online Financial Hackers Are Stealing from Your Wallet

Financial data theft

It’s Monday morning, and you’re back in the office after a much-needed weekend. The last of your coffee has brought the first glimmer of energy and you’re finally caught up on all of that email. You check your watch; 15 minutes before the next meeting – just enough time to login and pay off your credit card account.

You hope that the bill is under $500 this time, but you’ve never been particularly good at keeping track. Click, type, click. Let’s take a look at the damage.

New Charges: $19,384.22

Your confused disbelief is a mere calm before the storm of fear, denial, and helplessness that will grip you for far longer. How can this be possible? What should you do? Will anyone help you?

In the short time it took you to read this, the above scenario has become a reality for 85 people in the United States alone – part of the 15 million each year that become victim to financial fraud and identity theft.

Individuals are rarely targeted when it comes to large-scale efforts of theft and fraud. Rather, it’s the many organizations that have, use, and hold your financial and personal data – organizations that are increasingly the targets of organized and powerful attacks by hackers.

Over the last 30 days, the following businesses – omitting the multitude of platforms, Point of Sale software, back-end servers, and network infrastructures – were provided with access to my credit card and banking information, quite often from a mobile device:

– 3 app and music stores
– 2 coffee shops
– 9 restaurants
– 6 grocery store or commodity retailers
– 1 motorcycle rental location
– 3 gas stations
– 1 hotel
– 6 taxi or transportation businesses
– 1 theater
– 4 online marketplaces
– 1 mobile carrier
– 1 insurance company

The spread of our data is considerable to say the least, and if security isn’t a concern for you, it certainly is now for the aforementioned 15 million individuals affected by breaches that precisely target the major retailers and businesses that we leverage most often.

The term “risk mitigation” boils down to this: Your business, and the businesses that you transact with every day, can’t afford to ignore the reality of the security landscape when it comes to mobile data.

BlackBerry is passionate about designing, developing, and upholding a standard that can be trusted. We’re providing an information session where businesses can learn more about the realities of the current landscape. And, more importantly, how to protect themselves, their customers, and their reputations by leveraging exciting new enterprise solutions recently unveiled by BlackBerry.

Don’t miss the live event at 11:00am Eastern Time on Tuesday, January 27th.

• Register Now

About Luke Reimer