Madison Square Garden sports and entertainment fans may be in for a surprise when they receive their next payment card statements or may have an “a ha” moment if they used their cards there and saw fraudulent charges within the year. The Madison Square Garden Company disclosed a data breach recently in which cyber thieves stole payment card information from customers of the various concession stands over a one-year period.
Fans who purchased anything at any of the properties between November 9, 2015 and October 24, 2016 may have been victims of this. These venues include:
- Madison Square Garden
- Theater at Madison Square Garden
- Radio City Music Hall
- Beacon Theater
- Chicago Theater
If you visited any of these locations and used concessions there, be sure to check your payment card statements diligently for at least the next year. If anything looks suspicious, make some calls to find out if it is potentially fraudulent. Sometimes the text descriptions you see on the statements are somewhat cryptic. You can call you payment card company to find out more details and if it is determined as fraud, they can help you resolve it right away. Don’t delay, however. The sooner you take care of it, the less troublesome and expensive for you and the card issuer.
In addition, if you have the option to use your payment card as debit or credit, choose the credit option. This provides a little more security for you. If criminals have your card number as well as all the other information and your PIN, they can re-create the card and empty your bank account.
The information believed to have been stolen includes card numbers, names on the cards, expiration dates, and internal verification codes.
Although the investigation is still ongoing, it is believed that malicious software made it onto the payment processing system and was able to capture all of that information. However, the concessions payment processing systems are different from the ones used for ticket purchases at box offices, on the MSG website, or on Ticketmaster. Those were not affected by this.
For banks and credit unions
Share this article with your members
Copy a ready-made summary and link for your newsletter, website or social posts.
