Have You Ever Shopped at TJ Maxx? Uh-oh!

In what is reported as the biggest breach of personal data ever, at least 45.7 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen by hackers who accessed the computer systems at the TJX Cos. at its headquarters in Framingham and in the United Kingdom over a period of several years.
TJX operates 826 T.J. Maxx, 751 Marshalls, 271 HomeGoods, and 162 A.J. Wright stores, as well as 36 Bob's Stores, in the United States. In Canada, the company runs 184 Winners and 68 HomeSense stores, and in Europe, 212 T.K. Maxx stores.
Holy Cow.
Oh, and by the way, this was discovered before Christmas 2006. Lovely.
But wait, theres more!
TJX now believes portions of the credit and debit card transactions at its U.S., Puerto Rican, and Canadian stores -- excluding debit card transactions with cards issued by Canadian banks -- from January 2003 through June 2004 were compromised.
Oh, but notice the small tidbit in this article from Information Week.
"TJX has also likely run afoul of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard created by Visa and MasterCard, as a number of documents sent by Visa to financial institutions that issue cards and manage Visa transactions indicate TJX was storing credit and debit card data in violation of the standard."
You see, companies are supposed to comply with the industry standard for retaining this data and it seems our friends at TJMaxx have been keeping transaction and other data for far longer than they are supposed to. But other companies may be doing the same thing.
If you have used a credit/debit card at any of the above stores in the last 4 years, call the helpline TJX has set up at 866-484-6978.