On December 15th Target was targeted by malware (a virus) that hacked credit card machines and stole credit card numbers and in some cases email addresses and phone numbers. Anyone who has shopped at Target at any time around the time of the breach has been told to look for a charge of one cent. This charge is the indicator that a person’s information has been compromised and the credit card that this charge appears on should be deactivated immediately to avoid further charges. Smaller security breaches occurred in other large retailers in the nation but were miniscule compared to the 70 million people thought to have been affected by the Target breach.

Target has since stopped the breach and credit cards are not in any kind of danger. “Daily, people come in and ask if it is okay to use their credit card or red card,” said Paige Closson, an employee of Target. She followed up by saying that the breach is well over and people shouldn’t have any fear of their credit card being jeopardized. She also said that this kind of breach could happen to any company, an example being Kohl’s last year with a breach similar to Target.

The culprits associated with the Target credit breach have been apprehended. The culprits were a couple in their mid-twenties that used credit card numbers that were stolen during the breach to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, according to USA Today. The arrest is still under investigation.