Late last week came another of those MASSIVE DATA BREACH stories that we’ve all grown used to – hackers hit retail giant, steal credit card numbers, give everyone giant paperwork headaches and/or serious financial problems.

The Christmas 2014 version of the story concerned the office supply chain Staples, and it flew a little bit under the radar, perhaps because it was of slightly smaller scale. The number of credit cards stolen was only (?) 1.16 million, and only (!) 115 of Staples’ 1,400+ retail outlets were affected.

But one of those outlets was the Staples store on West Harris in Eureka.

Between Aug. 10 and Sept. 16, the hacker group called “Anunak” – interesting profile here – infected the point-of-sale systems at Eureka Staples with a malicious bit of software that beamed the details of credit cards swiped back to Anunak home base.

If you think you may have bought something with a credit card at the Eureka Staples store during that period, the first thing you want to do is check your bank statements and verify that. While you’re there, take a close look at your transactions since, to see if you didn’t actually make any of them.

The next thing you want to do is read Staples’ fact sheet about the incident. Note that the chain is offering

free identity protection services, including credit monitoring, identity theft insurance, and a free credit report, to those customers who used a payment card at one of the affected stores during the relevant time periods.

More questions? Staples has set up a hotline – (866) 274-4371.