Hannaford offers advice to ease customer concerns

. Customers should carefully review their financial institution and credit card statements, and immediately contact their credit card company or issuing bank with any questions or concerns about individual charges.

. Customers with questions may call Hannaford’s dedicated customer assistance line at 866-591-4580.

The Maine Association of Community Banks issued a statement Monday evening with the following information:

. Banks are monitoring debit and credit card activity, and each bank that received an alert from Visa or MasterCard will decide individually whether to issue or not issue new cards.

. Customers do not need to call their banks, unless they find irregularities in their account.

. Federal banking laws ensure that no consumer will be held financially responsible for any fraud confirmed as part of the breach.

. The association reiterated that this was not a problem caused by banks.

Bangor Savings Bank Senior Vice President Yellow Light Breen said Monday evening about 20,000 bank customers had credit or debit card numbers in Hannaford’s database.

Breen said it is important to remember that even if a person’s information was in Hannaford’s database at the time of the hacking, the information was not necessarily downloaded or used.

“We’re getting information by the hour,” Breen said. “It seems the information on the back of the card and the magnetic stripe were in the system, not PIN [personal identification numbers]. We will communicate with everyone we believe had information in the system database.”