NewburyportNews.com, Newburyport, MA

Business

March 18, 2008

Data breach exposes 4.2 million Hannaford customers

Hannaford Bros. supermarket chain has announced a security breach that has led to the thefts of customer credit and debit card numbers.

Hannaford said yesterday that the security breach affects all of its 165 stores in the Northeast, 106 Sweetbay stores in Florida and a smaller number of independent groceries that sell Hannaford products. The company puts the number of unique credit and debit card numbers that were potentially exposed to fraud at 4.2 million.

The company is currently aware of about 1,800 cases of reported fraud related to the security breach.

Ronald Hodge, Hannaford president and CEO, says the company has "taken aggressive steps to augment our network security capabilities" since unusual credit card activity came to light on Feb. 27.

— Associated Press

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