Card sharps

摘要

Bowing in unison before cameras and customers, the heads of three big South Korean credit-card firms-kb Kookmin Card, Lotte Card and nh Nonghyup Card-apologised, then resigned, on January 20th. Over 20 executives followed. The synchronised hand-wringing was over one of Korea's largest-ever thefts of customer data. On January 8th prosecutors arrested an it contractor for stealing the personal information of around 20m credit-card holders-more than half the working-age population. While working for the Korea Credit Bureau, which evaluates risk for the three card companies, he is said to have transferred details from 104m accounts onto a usb stick over a year, from May 2012. The managers of two marketing companies have been charged with buying the stolen records.