Both the Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette distributed printed materials with last Sunday’s paper that included the credit and debit card numbers of nearly a quarter-million subscribers. Officials with the company have a hot line, (888) 665-2644, to which customers may call and begin to slowly berate the company for treating their personal information with disregard.

At least they went out of their way to pull the papers from circulation:

Larkin said the newspapers were first notified of the security breach on Monday by a clerk at a Cumberland Farms store. It took until late Monday for officials to confirm the data on the back of the paper were credit and debit card numbers. Senior management learned of the security breach Tuesday morning, Larkin said. The company put out a news release late Tuesday afternoon.

Globe and Worcester T&G customer credit info mistakenly released [Boston.com] (Thanks, Tim!)

Update: Tim follows up with a link to a form that allows Globe customers to see if they are affected. So far, says Tim, “everyone in my office and my wife’s office has been.”

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