Wendy’s Credit Card Breach Is ‘Considerably’ Bigger Than They Originally Said — Time To Check Your Statements

Earlier this week, Wendy’s restaurants revealed that they had been hit with a credit card breach that saw a lot of customers’ data come under fire. Now, reports are coming out that the breach is getting much larger and it is “considerably” bigger than Wendy’s originally reported, which means that everyone should check their statements to see if there is any suspicious activity.

It was originally back in January that Wendy’s revealed their security breach of credit card data, but here it is six months later and it’s gotten bigger. Well, it hasn’t actually gotten bigger, but Wendy’s has revealed that it is much bigger than they originally reported.

“Based on the preliminary findings of the previously-disclosed investigation, the Company reported on May 11 that malware had been discovered on the point of sale (POS) system at fewer than 300 franchised North America Wendy’s restaurants. An additional 50 franchise restaurants were also suspected of experiencing, or had been found to have, other cybersecurity issues.”

This is leading to Wendy’s directing its “investigator to continue to investigate.” While news of the data breach isn’t exactly new and earth-shattering, the news of it being this large is extremely concerning for customers.

Wendy’s data breach ‘considerably higher’ than previously announced #cybersecurity #breachhttps://t.co/s7A6k1cnwL pic.twitter.com/cZNFc3Eghu

— Bob Carver (@cybersecboardrm) June 12, 2016

As reported by NBC News, the discovery by Wendy’s came in the form of a variant of malware that was discovered and reported to have affected a POS system that was previously believed to be unaffected. Any cases found have been disabled by Wendy’s investigators.

Wendy’s did go on to say that the investigation has revealed that any company-owned restaurants were not impacted or affected by the malware activity. Still, customers aren’t happy and regular patron Justin Eyer is rather concerned about the whole thing as he told Fox 45 Now.

“That’s not good. I would love to learn what they are doing about it.”

Security experts say that the credit card fraud at Wendy’s allowed hackers to remotely access payment data. One never knows where hackers may have their equipment or access and some believe it is like “playing Russian roulette” every time you swipe your card in any location.

One of the main things that customers would like is a list of the affected Wendy’s locations and which ones have been hit by the credit card breach. Instead of having to keep checking their statements, they would like to know if there is even a chance their information has been compromised.

It was originally said that about 5 percent of Wendy’s stores were hit by the point-of-sale system issue. While the company has not said exactly how much larger the problem has grown, the mutation of the malware has caused it to spread in a pretty big fashion for the second wave of cyber attacks.

The issue with Wendy’s listing all of the stores that have been targeted and attacked is not something they are necessarily holding back, but may not be able to do just yet. The list could be rather large and expansive to the point where the investigation is still trying to figure out all of them.

Wendy’s currently has around 5,700 chain locations in operation in the United States.

A number of big-time companies and especially fast food restaurants have been met with credit card and data breaches in the past year. Wendy’s is only the latest one to fall victim to this issue, and it is something that customers really need to give a lot of notice to. Now that they have revealed the breach to be “considerably” bigger than originally reported, a lot more have been affected and if you were in the clear before, you may not be now.

[Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]