Online credit issuer NextCard Inc. quietly pulled the plug on a promotion it ran on CDUniverse.com because of a hacker’s well-publicized theft of thousands of consumer credit card numbers from the music retailer.
“We spoke with them, and because of all the press, they were a little concerned and they wanted to come down until we come out with a very positive release saying that we have basically the safest site on the Internet,” said Brett Brewer, vice president of e-commerce at eUniverse Inc., parent company of CDUniverse.
Brewer said eUniverse plans to publicly disclose the security changes it is making either Thursday or Friday. He expects the NextCard promotion to recommence this weekend. NextCard did not comment on the situation despite several phone calls from iMarketing News.
In November, San Francisco-based NextCard began giving $20 CDUniverse gift certificates to anyone who applied for and received a NextCard through a banner link on any of the several commerce sites operated by eUniverse. NextCard issues credit instantly through the Web.
This month a hacker who claimed to be a 19-year-old from Russia used a Web site called Maxus Credit Card Pipeline to distribute up to 25,000 credit card numbers he stole from the CDUniverse site. The event re-awakened debate about the safety of shopping on the Net.
It wasn't immediately known whether any of the stolen numbers belonged to cardholders of NextCard, which guarantees it will cover the full cost of any fraud arising from consumers’ use of a NextCard Visa.
