Banks can figure out the source of a major credit card breach long before the targeted company announces that something went wrong, and that site shares the scary news with the rest of the world. Have you used your credit card at a Goodwill Industries store lately? Bad news from that not-for-profit thrift store chain.

If you want to learn where your credit card number may have been stolen by evil fraudsters long before the rest of the world, you should keep an eye on the blog Krebs on Security. It will make you want to lock your credit cards up in a safe in a secret room in your basement and use cash for every transaction, sure, but isn’t it better to be paranoid than to be uninformed?

In any case, banker sources say that cards hit with fraud were used in Goodwill Industry retail stores in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Goodwill confirmed that it is working with the Secret Service regarding a possible payment information breach at “select U.S. store locations.”

Goodwill Industries International was contacted last Friday afternoon by a payment card industry fraud investigative unit and federal authorities informing us that select U.S. store locations may have been the victims of possible theft of payment card numbers.

While Goodwill didn’t confirm this, financial industry sources said that their evidence indicates that the breach may go back to the middle of 2013. If we learn anything more that thrift shoppers should be terrified about, we’ll let you know.

Banks: Card Breach at Goodwill Industries

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