Columbia Heights Giant Grocery Store Found a Skimming Device at Self Checkout on March 5th

1345 Park Road, NW

Thanks to all who passed on from WTOP: ”

From GIANT FOOD: “The device was found at one self-checkout point at its store at 1345 Park Road, in Northwest.”

“To Our Valued Giant Food Customers,

We recently learned of an issue involving some of our customers’ personal information. On March 5, 2020, we learned that someone had illegally placed a device that skims information from payment cards on top of a pin pad at one of the self-checkout registers at the Giant Food store located at 1345 Park Road, NW, Washington. DC.

Immediately upon learning of the issue, we took steps to secure this checkout lane and review video surveillance to determine how long the device had been in use. We also contacted law enforcement and began working closely with a third-party forensic investigator to determine what, if any, data it had captured.

The device was installed on only one pin pad in the store and forensic investigation concluded that it was capable of capturing data from payment card EMV chips but not from magnetic stripes. The personal information found on the device included names, payment account numbers, and expiration dates for a limited number of customers who used that particular self-checkout terminal for a limited time period before March 5. The device was designed such that extraction of the captured payment card transaction data would require manual insertion of a reader device into the card capture device, but the data could not be accessed remotely. We have been unable to determine if any data was extracted from the device, but it is possible that data was extracted before the skimmer was discovered by Giant Food.

Based on our investigation, at this time, we have no evidence that any of the information has been misused as a result of this issue. However, out of an abundance of caution, we are notifying our customers. Please know we take our obligation to safeguard personal information very seriously and are alerting you about this issue so you can take steps to help protect yourself. You are entitled under U.S. law to one free credit report annually from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion). To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call toll-free at 1-877-322-8228. We encourage you to remain vigilant by reviewing your account statements and monitoring your free credit reports.

The attached Reference Guide provides recommendations by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on the protection of personal information.

We hope this information is useful to you. If you have any questions regarding this issue, please call 888-469-4426 Monday-Friday from 8:00am-7:00pm ET or Saturday 8:00am-5:00pm ET.

Again, we regret any inconvenience this may cause you.

Sincerely,

Bob Bennett, Vice President of Operations, Giant Food”