Have you used Tar Heel Takeout recently? Your credit card information may be at risk.

Earlier this week, Tar Heel Takeout announced that their server was hacked on October 29 and some personal information “may have been compromised.” Possible compromised data include credit and debit card numbers, email addresses, passwords, and billing and delivery addresses.

The breach affected Tar Heel Takeout’s Chapel Hill location. Their other locations in Raleigh, Durham, and Fuquay-Varina were not affected.

Chapel Hill Police and the state attorney general’s office have been notified. In the meantime, Tar Heel Takeout is asking customers to change their passwords on the site and review their account statements for any suspicious charges.

The full statement from Tar Heel Takeout is below:

Dear Valued Customer,
 
We regret to inform you that on October 29th, 2014, our server was attacked by an Internet hacker and the security of certain personal information associated with customers of our Chapel Hill location may have been compromised.
 
You may have read about similar credit card data breaches in the news recently. We, unfortunately, are the latest victims in this trend. Although we had taken measures that we believe were commercially reasonable under the circumstances, we were victimized by a sophisticated cyber attack.
 
The data that may have been accessed included credit and debit card numbers and corresponding expiration dates, email addresses, delivery and billing addresses, and the passwords our customers use to access our website. We have been diligently investigating this incident, and at this time, we are unable to determine which, if any, of our customers’ personal information was accessed by the hacker.
 
Customer information associated with our Raleigh, Durham, and Fuquay-Varina locations was not affected. We do not store CVV (card verification value) numbers in our database, nor do we have access to birthdates or Social Security Numbers, so these categories of information were not at risk.
 
We have notified the Chapel Hill Police Department, the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office and the three national credit reporting bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion). We are committed to cooperating with law enforcement as they investigate this incident.
 
In addition, we have manually audited every single line of our website code to ensure that we are no longer vulnerable to this type of cyber attack, and we are confident that a breach of this nature is no longer possible.

We place a high priority on our relationship with you. Your trust is very important to us, and we take our responsibility to protect your data very seriously. We are providing the following information to you to help you avoid financial loss in connection with this incident. We urge you to take the following steps to protect yourself:

    Login to www.takeoutcentral.com and change your password.
    If you use this same password with any other website, especially for online banking or other sensitive services, please change it immediately. (As a general rule, it is not prudent to use the same password for multiple online accounts.)
    Carefully review your account statements for suspicious charges promptly upon receipt.
    Consider proactively contacting your credit card issuer and changing your card number.

If you discover any suspicious or unusual activity on your accounts or suspect fraud, report it immediately to your financial institution(s). In addition, you may contact the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), the N.C. Attorney General’s Office, or local law enforcement to report incidents of credit card fraud or identity theft or to learn about steps you can take to protect yourself from identity theft. Contact information for the Federal Trade Commission and the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office is as follows:
 
Federal Trade Commission
Consumer Response Center
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20580
1- (877) 438-4338
www.consumer.gov/idtheft
    
North Carolina Department of Justice
Consumer Protection Division
9001 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-9001
(877) 566-7226
http://www.ncdoj.com/consumer.aspx
 
You are also entitled to a free copy of your credit report every 12 months from each of the three nationwide credit reporting agencies. You may learn more about this by going to www.AnnualCreditReport.com or by calling (877) 322-8228. You may contact the credit reporting agencies at:
 
Equifax
(800) 525-6285
P.O. Box 740241
Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
www.equifax.com
    
Experian
(888) 397-3742
P.O. Box 9532
Allen, TX 75013
www.experian.com
    
TransUnion
(800) 680-7289
Fraud Victim Assistance Division
P.O. Box 6790
Fullerton, CA 92834-6790
www.transunion.com
 
North Carolina Consumers Have the Right to Obtain a Security Freeze.
You have a right to place a “security freeze” on your credit report pursuant to North Carolina law. The security freeze will prohibit a consumer reporting agency from releasing any information in your credit report without your express authorization. A security freeze can be requested in writing by first-class mail, by telephone, or electronically. You also may request a freeze by visiting the following Web sites or calling the following telephone numbers:
Experian
Experian Security Freeze
P.O. Box 9554, Allen, TX 75013
www.experian.com/freeze
1-888-397-3742
 
Transunion
TransUnion Protected Consumer Freeze
P.O. Box 380
Woodlyn, PA 19094
https://freeze.transunion.com
1-800-916-8800
    
Equifax
Equifax Security Freeze
P.O. Box 105788
Atlanta, Georgia 30348
https://www.freeze.equifax.com
1-800-685-1111
 
The security freeze is designed to prevent credit, loans, and services from being approved in your name without your consent. However, you should be aware that using a security freeze to take control over who gains access to the personal and financial information in your credit report may delay, interfere with, or prohibit the timely approval of any subsequent request or application you make regarding new loans, credit, mortgage, insurance, rental housing, employment, investment, license, cellular phone, utilities, digital signature, Internet credit card transactions, or other services, including an extension of credit at point of sale. The freeze will be placed within three business days if you request it by mail, or within 24 hours if you request it by telephone or electronically. When you place a security freeze on your credit report, within three business days, you will be sent a personal identification number or a password to use when you want to remove the security freeze, temporarily lift it, or lift it with respect to a particular third party. A freeze does not apply when you have an existing account relationship and a copy of your report is requested by your existing creditor or its agents or affiliates for certain types of account review, collection, fraud control, or similar activities. You should plan ahead and lift a freeze if you are actively seeking credit or services as a security freeze may slow your applications, as mentioned above. You can remove a freeze, temporarily lift a freeze, or lift a freeze with respect to a particular third party by contacting the consumer reporting agency and providing all of the following:

(1) Your personal identification number or password,
(2) Proper identification to verify your identity, and
(3) Proper information regarding the period of time you want your report available to users of the credit report, or the third party with respect to which you want to lift the freeze.

A consumer reporting agency that receives a request from you to temporarily lift a freeze or to lift a freeze with respect to a particular third party on a credit report shall comply with the request no later than three business days after receiving the request by mail and no later than 15 minutes after receiving a request by telephone or electronically. A consumer reporting agency may charge you up to three dollars ($3.00) to institute a freeze if your request is made by telephone or by mail. A consumer reporting agency may not charge you any amount to freeze, remove a freeze, temporarily lift a freeze, or lift a freeze with respect to a particular third party, if any of the following are true:

(1) Your request is made electronically.
(2) You are over the age of 62.
(3) You are the victim of identity theft and have submitted a copy of a valid investigative or incident report or complaint with a law enforcement agency about the unlawful use of your identifying information by another person, or you are the spouse of such a person.
 
Of course, we at Takeout Central want to do what we can to help you. You can contact us directly at (919) 942-7678 or at manager@takeoutcentral.com.
 
We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience that this has caused; we know that your time and your privacy are valuable. We hope that we can restore the confidence that you have put in our company these last 15 years.
 
Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,
Wes Garrison
Co-founder, TakeoutCentral.com