Heartland Payment Systems may have failed to protect the financial and personal information of up to 100 million consumers.

Investigation and potential class action against Heartland Payment Systems for a data breach involving credit and debit cards.

Heartland is a processor of credit and debit card transactions for thousands of merchants. On January 20, 2009, Heartland issued a press release and launched a website, www.2008breach.com, stating: "Heartland was notified by Visa and MasterCard of suspicious activity surrounding card transactions that Heartland processed"; and? Heartland "uncovered malicious software that compromised data, which crossed the company's network in 2008."

According to a news report, the breach "may have led to the theft of more than 100 million credit and debit card accounts." That figure would make the breach one of the largest data breaches ever reported. Fraudulent activity has begun to occur on some of the compromised cards. The stolen data reportedly includes credit and debit card numbers and expiration dates. Armed with this data, thieves can make counterfeit cards by imprinting the stolen information onto fabricated cards. Affected cardholders might receive notification from their card-issuing banks or related entities informing them that their cards were affected by the Heartland breach.