Target: Data breach caught up to 70M customers

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The number of North Carolina residents impacted by a massive data breach at Target stores could be growing.

After announcing last month that 40 million shoppers had their credit and debit card accounts compromised, the company now said hackers also stole personal information from as many as 70 million customers.

The information now in the hands of hackers includes home addresses, email addresses and phone numbers.

"That's pretty scary. I'm not too happy about that at all," said Bert Lampley, a Target customer who found out his debit card account had been hacked after Target first announced the breach last month.

Hackers hit Target's computer system during the height of the Christmas shopping season.

The company's ongoing investigation revealed even more data had been stolen.

"It's going to open a Pandora's Box of possibilities for the bad guys," said Tom Bartholomy of the Charlotte Better Business Bureau.

He said the theft of customers' personal information could leave them vulnerable to additional fraud because hackers are likely to sell that information to other scammers.

"Anybody that wants to use it for email scams, they have phone numbers so it can be telemarketing scams," Bartholomy said.

The BBB is recommends that anyone who shopped at a Target store over the last year should begin checking their credit reports regularly for any unusual activity.

Target is offering free credit monitoring for a year for any shoppers whose data was stolen. Customers have three months to sign up.

Guests can find updated information in the Data Breach FAQs to help answer questions and provide additional resources.

WSOC