The difference between Target and Home Depot.

I stopped by the local Target store yesterday to hunt down some items that our fearless Santa Shop chair was looking for.  I was closer than she was, so I volunteered.  As I was checking out, I asked the cashier what she thought of the Home Depot debacle vs. how it was handled with Target.

"Target caught it in what, three weeks?  Home Depot had it happen in April, they are just announcing it now and it is a much larger breach than what Target had, yet Target was raked over the coals."

"Ma'am, you don't even know."

"I can only imagine."

"Actually, you probably can't.  I had people screaming at me and still do on a daily basis.  I was part of the hacking victims, too."

"If that is accurate - and if even a majority of Home Depot stores were compromised - this breach could be many times larger than Target, which had 40 million credit and debit cards stolen over a three-week period," he noted.

Why did Target get so much flak?  You can say it is because it was the height of the Christmas shopping season, but wouldn't we say that from April through September would be Home Depot's main shopping season for home improvement projects?

Target got a lot of flak for it taking them three weeks to notice/announce it.  Um, I'm counting up 5 months + with Home Depot.  Where is the back peddling with them?  Why aren't people up in arms like they were with Target?

I still shop Target.  I'm there a few times a month.

Will I continue to shop at Home Depot?  Yes.  Why?  Since our city tax information was stolen by Turkish hackers a little over a year ago, I locked all of our information down with Equifax.  No one can open a credit card without us being alerted.  No one can run a credit check, well-- not without our authorizing it with specific codes and whatnot.  We pared down our credit cards and took a bit of a credit rating hit for a while for canceling one.  (They don't want you to cancel them, but you can just leave them hanging there unused.  Tell me that's not an invitation to someone to use a dormant card.)  Our financial well-being is monitored.  You know what?  My friend who works for the Federal Reserve told me that it's just not an option anymore.  Cases like this will be the norm and not so much an occasional occurrence.

So, Home Depot, how are you going to correct the situation?