Hacker group Anonymous is launching a ‘Robin Hood’-style campaign, donating money stolen from hacked credit cards and donating it to charities, homeless people and anti-government protesters around the world.
The group, which has linked with another rogue collective, called Teampoison, has already released a statement, which reads: “Operation Robin Hood is going to return the money to those who have been cheated by our system and most importantly to those hurt by our banks. Operation Robin Hood will take credit cards and donate to the 99% as well as various charities around the globe.”
“We have already taken Chase, Bank of America, and CitiBank credit cards with big breaches across the map. We have returned it to the poor (the true 99%) who deserve it,” they added.
The hackers implied that their actions won’t hurt cardholders because credit card fraud victims are generally reimbursed by banks. However, this might not be true in all cases, because the laws regulating fraud liability vary around the world.
“After 60 to 120 days of the transaction date, depending on the association and the country, both the customer and Citi do not have rights any longer to initiate a dispute,” a CitiBank spokeswoman said. “Upon noticing a suspected fraudulent transaction the customer should report it immediately to the respective Citiphone customer service unit who will act swiftly to investigate the issue,” she added.
Even if in most circumstances card holders might not be liable for costs resulting from fraudulent transactions, merchants can be. “Ultimately the money is lost by either the issuer bank or the acquirer/merchant depending on the chargeback rules and processes followed/not followed,” the spokeswoman concluded.
