Below, take a look at 10 of the biggest data breaches of the decade.
Heartland Payment Systems -- 2009
In what has been called the largest credit card crime of all time, in 2009, Heartland Payment Systems announced that hackers had broken into the computers it uses to process about 100 million transactions each month for 175,000 merchants. Heartland, which is based in Princeton, New Jersey, processes card payments for restaurants and other businesses. The hack was uncovered in January, after Visa and MasterCardnotified Heartland about suspicious transactions.
In August 2009, three men were indicted by a grand jury on charges related to masterminding a scheme to steal more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers and personally identifying information from Heartland, 7-ElevenInc. and other companies.
Last month, Heartland agreed to pay MasterCard issuers $41.4 million to settle claims over the data breach, according to The Associated Press. In order for the deal to go through, 80 percent of MasterCard issuers who filed claimed must accept the settlement by June 25.
The blogosphere cried foul last week when news broke that an AT&Tsecurity breach exposed the e-mail addresses of at least one hundred thousand owners of Apple's iPad3G, but cyber crime has been around for a long time.
