Consumer columnist David Lazarus a victim of ID theft

David Lazarus wrote a column on Saturday taking retailers like Target to task for not doing a better job of safeguarding the credit card data of their customers. Hours later, he found that his own American Express card was among the pilfered. "An identity thief ran up nearly $2,000 in bogus charges at Polo Ralph Lauren, Coach, Tommy Hilfiger and Burberry's on Saturday," he says on an LA Times blog. "I'd appreciate the irony if I wasn't so cheesed off.

American Express contacted me to say that my card number was used to purchase hundreds of dollars worth of goodies at leading luxury stores.

The thief made off with the loot before my card could be shut down.

I received news of my fourth -- collect them all -- incident of ID theft on the same day I wrote a column saying that business have the tools and know-how to keep hackers at bay, but they don't effectively use them....

The AmEx rep told me the company is seeing a surge in fraud reports as a result of the Target hack. Count me among them.

Bummer.