Alice Coster: ‘As an unwitting long-time customer I say cough up Latitude. We certainly have been.’

One long-forgotten, but oh-so-treacherous day, I decided to splurge on a holiday flight on my GE Money card. Today, that decision has proved to be a never-ending trap.

I loved that big brown couch. So much history.

Like using the couch pillow for protection after bringing the baby home from hospital. And grappling for the remote control buried deep in crevices during night feeds.

The dogs loved that big brown couch, too.

Ella, the sheepdog, would peek from behind the couch when she wasn’t ripping out hunks of couch foam. Klaus, the dachshund, would lick at the same tiny couch spot so that it shined.

But it was time. The big brown Domayne couch was lugged out to the nature strip last week. The end of an era.

But was it?

The very next day an email lobbed from Latitude Financial chief executive Bob Belan.

He was “sincerely apologising”:

Latitude financial’s recent data hack has exposed thousands of customer details.

“Dear Alice,

Latitude recently experienced a significant and malicious cyber-attack which resulted in data being stolen from our systems. It is with deep regret that I am sharing with you that some of your personal information was compromised.”

With the “big four” banks drilled into me since childhood, I still have the same account since dollarmite days. The email immediately felt like a phishing scam.

Yet it contained account and reference numbers.

Perhaps the phishing wasn’t so fishy. But how could this be? The closest I’ve ever been to “Latitude” is a once not-so-trendy nightspot.

And then it struck. The lightbulb moment.

That bloody big brown Domayne couch.

It seemed like a big purchase at the time 15 years ago. My first grown-up couch.

Over the years, there had been plenty of parental handouts and roadside rescues. But this was the first piece of significant furniture I bought with my own cold hard cash.

Or, so I thought.

Blissfully unaware of the exorbitant fees and interest charges, the GE Money, turned GO Money, turned Latitude, became the new monkey on my back.

At the time, I merrily signed the dotted line on a 60-month-interest-free form. When my couch was delivered, no money had been transacted.

I wasn’t one to miss payments. They were duly taken out of the account each payday and processed to a credit card then called GE Money.

One long-forgotten, but oh-so-treacherous day, I decided to have a splurge. I paid for a holiday flight on my GE Money card.

It was a credit card, that’s what they are for, said my twenty-something-self. A bad break up can make you do bad things. But making that credit card payment sucked more years of my life’s savings than even the old boyfriend – well, maybe.

Unaware, or blissfully ignorant, of the exorbitant fees and interest charges, the GE Money, turned GO Money, turned Latitude, became the new monkey on my back.

Every week, every month, every year this went on until finally building up the courage to cancel out.

Turns out the thousands upon thousands of repayments, for what was originally a $3000 limit couch credit card had been in vain.

I was still $2000 odd in debt. A never-ending trap. It was ludicrous, predatory and felt like a borderline scam. Confused and lucky to have a tax return I cashed out in fury.

Eight years ago, I declared that damn credit card as a case closed.

Yet it turns out that cutting up the credit card into small pieces and saying goodbye for good was just the beginning.

From my first grown-up couch to an impulsive holiday splurge, my credit card payments from years ago are still haunting me.

Consumer finance provider Latitude Financial confirmed I’m just one of 14 million customers whose details were stolen from its computer systems in a cyberattack. It might be the biggest data breach in Australia.

It’s staggering that the personal details of a credit card which should have been long forgotten are still stored away.

The email from Latitude continued:

“We have so far identified that the attack resulted in the following kinds of your personal information being compromised.

“This information was collected from you at the time you applied for credit from Latitude or our predecessor companies.

“The driver's licence number you provided us as part of your application …. including your full name, address, date of birth and phone number.”

The wide-eyed bewilderment is back. How is a company still keeping store, and no doubt somehow still benefiting from, the personal data shared as that wide-eyed 20-something?

It doesn’t feel right.

On Tuesday Latitude’s Belan felt compelled to write again. He said that the company would not pay a ransom to the data hackers, saying “there is simply no guarantee that doing so would result in any customer data being destroyed and it would only encourage further extortion attempts on Australian and New Zealand businesses in the future”.

As an unwitting long-time customer I say cough up Latitude. We certainly have been. Perhaps you could offer the ransomers a 60-month no-interest guarantee.

Guarantee they will never come back.