When an office-supply store sends you a targeted offer for a new printer, the personal data the company uses to tailor its pitch is exempt from numerous consumer protection laws.

Three months after coming to light, the massive exposure of 40 million card accounts at Target Corp. still has the payments industry and consumers talking about what should be done to prevent this happening again. In the United States, that is.

Target's profit fell nearly 50 percent in its fourth fiscal quarter and declined by more than a third for all of 2013, the retailer reports, damage likely the result of the credit card data breach that compromised information on as many as 110 million customers.

What good could possibly come from breaches at major retailers that exposed millions of Americans to potential card fraud? The silver lining for U.S. financial institutions is that the breaches at Target, Neiman Marcus and Michaels have woken up their customer base to cybersecurity threats.

The most loyal and engaged shoppers are the ones who still pick private-label cards, a new study says.

Target's cybersecurity staff urged the retailer to review the security of its payments system at least two months before hackers compromised its network, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. consumer credit in December grew by the most in nearly a year due to a sharp increase in credit card usage, a potentially positive sign for the economy, according to the Federal Reserve's latest G.19 report.

Guests at some Marriott, Sheraton, Holiday Inn and other hotel properties had their credit card data exposed in a breach that occurred between March 20 and December 16 last year, according to hotel management firm White Lodging Services Corp.

Consumers in December filed 1,254 complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau against a total of 383 debt collectors. The status of the complaints include 1,246 with timely responses.

The likes of Apple and Amazon are becoming bigger threats to incumbent payments companies, but MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga says his company views these players as potential allies.

Michaels is investigating a possible data security attack, CEO Chuck Rubin said in a letter to customers.

South Korea's biggest theft of personal information on credit-card holders prompted dozens of top executives at financial firms including KB Financial Group Inc. to offer to quit this week as a regulatory probe widened.

Credit card spending rose during the holiday shopping season from American Express Co. and Capital One Financial Corp. customers led to higher fourth-quarter profits for both firms, the companies reported.

U.S. banks and merchants face mounting pressure to catch up with technology used in Europe, Asia and Latin America to secure credit- and debit-card data after tens of millions of Target Corp. customers were exposed.

The latest quarterly survey of U.S. and Canadian bank risk professionals found expectations for delinquencies on auto loans hit their highest level since Q4 2012, and expectations for delinquencies on credit cards reached their highest level in two years.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said it replaced 2 million payment cards after the breach of consumer data at retailers including Target Corp.

Card reward programs are well past their Sperry & Hutchinson Green Stamps phase, where people redeem their rewards by picking items from a catalog that stays pretty much the same all the time.

Alabama State Employees Credit Union has filed the first class action by a financial services company against Target Corp. over costs from the massive card security data breach.

As the impact of Target's data breach continues to widen, credit unions have been more responsive than banks when it comes to issuing new cards, according to two recent online surveys.

Target Corp. faces almost two dozen lawsuits filed by customers after a computer security breach exposed data on 40 million debit and credit cards.