If You've Eaten At One Of These 500 Restaurants In The Last 2 Years, Your Credit Card Information Might Be At Risk

Major American restaurant group Landry's, Inc. has completed its investigation into a national credit card breach that was first discovered in December, the company announced in a press release from late January.

Late last year, Landry's — which owns more than 500 restaurants and chains across the United States, including the Rainforest Cafe, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, Morton's Steakhouse, and  Landry's Seafood — announced that it had launched an investigation after receiving multiple reports of unauthorized charges on credit cards belonging to customers who had eaten at one of its restaurants.

At the time, all customers who ate at a Landry-owned restaurant between May and December 2015 were advised to check their credit card statements for suspicious activity.

Following the completion of its investigation, Landry's subsequently expanded the scope of at-risk customers to two years, meaning that some patrons who visited a Landry's location between May 2014 and March 2015 are also at risk. March 2015 through May 2015 is also noted as an at-risk period for the breach.

A full list of Landry's restaurants affected by the breach, and their respective at-risk timeframes, is available online. Landry's will attempt to contact affected customers for whom the company has the appropriate contact information.

According to a statement from Landry's, the security breach has been traced back to a program installed on payment processing machines at certain restaurant locations and managed properties. "The program was designed to search for data from the magnetic stripe of payment cards that had been swiped (cardholder name, card number, expiration date and internal verification code) as the data was being routed through affected systems," the company said.

Going forward, "enhanced security measures, including end-to-end encryption, have been implemented to prevent a similar issue from occurring in the future."