A new report from Javelin Strategy and Research suggests that many credit and debit card holders fail to understand the importance of a notice saying that a credit card or debit card has been breached and do not protect themselves from fraud.
The company's research found that people notified of a breach of their secure data were four times as likely as the public at large of actually experiencing financial or other fraud within a year of the notification.
Further, those who experienced a breach in their secure data and then an incident of fraud very rarely link the fraud to the breach.
"Among consumers who received a data breach notification in the past 12 months, 19% suffered fraud, yet only 2% attributed their fraud to a data breach, the firm reported. "It seems as if consumers are not connecting the dots on data breach notifications to fraud events. They are aware, in the abstract, some personal records of theirs have been compromised, but when they become a victim of fraud they do not make the connection to the breach notification."