One in three victims of Target card breach could face fraud: Survey

About one in three victims of data breach, like Target Corp's mega exploit last December, could face fraud, a new survey has revealed.

Javelin Research polled 5,634 US adults over three weeks last October about financial fraud incidents and found that correlation between a fraud victim and a breach victim gets stronger every year.

According to PC World, Target's credit card mega breach as a result of bugged point-of-sales (PoS) systems exposed personal and financial information of about 110 million customers.

Al Pascual, senior analyst for security risk and fraud, who co-authored the report, said that those details are less likely to result in fraud because cybercriminals are intensely focused these days on payment card details, which are easier to monetize.

However, banks and card issuers replace cards used fraudulently, but they frequently opt not to reissue cards when not used by criminals, since it is expensive and is inconvenient for their customers.

Javelin said that the cost of fraud caused by criminals abusing payment cards and other accounts, such as checking, savings and loan accounts, jumped by 36 percent to 16 billion dollars, up from 11 billion dollars in 2012, the report added.