Since I am a subscriber to the “Boston Globe”, this has me understandably steamed.
Here is a link to the story:
Basically, the credit card numbers of over 200,000 Boston Globe subscribers were inadvertently printed out on the sheets of paper that are used for bundling and delivering the “Worcester Telegraph”.
And taking this to a personal level, stories such as this really upset me because I have tried to get a job as a programmer for over half my life in the computer industry but since I have no experience, nobody gives a rat’s ass. Granted, the above incident might not have been specifically due to a programming error, but you’d think those folks with all of their computable experiences would have done a gooder job of making that information a heck of a lot more securitable. (I am assuming that they hired people with those fancy shmantzy computery experience credentiables). :mad:
My take on this is that it wasn’t a programming error, but a failure to properly dispose of sensitive documents.
I can easily picture someone in the circulation dept. printing a subscriber list with that information on it, and then putting the report in the recycle bin, where it got “recycled” by being used to wrap newspaper bundles.
Many businesses have locked “shredding bins” for sensitive papers that are emptied and shredded periodically. Sounds like the Boston Globe needs something like this.
I’m on the list too, seemingly. That said, I’m not all that worried. It seems to me that the chances somebody will find and use my number are remote. Especially if it’s just a number without a name attached.
I called my credit card company last night, and they’re not worried. Well, so they say. I talked to a customer service rep., and she said that they are well aware of the problem, are monitoring all accounts, and I won’t be liable if there is fraud.*
My read on their comment is that their heads are spinning with the thought of reissuing 240,000 cards because of a dumb mistake, and they are performing financial triage.
Heh. I have a client power company in Kentucky who is building a fiber to the home type network. We needed their customer list to geocode and plot the customer addresses in the GIS system we were going to use for the network design. Those guys sent us their entire billing database. Got all their customer names, bank account info, and social security numbers and credit/debit card numbers (if a person had ever paid using one of those vehicles). First thing we did was let 'em know they sent us stuff they shouldn’t have and deleted those columns from the tables. Popped the original CD’s in the microwave for a couple seconds, too. I was extremely surprised to find that kinda data so carelessly transferred.
Hmmm, other comments are now making me wonder if everything is as secure as “The Globe” says it is. I finally found out that my credit card information was not compromised. Then again how do I really know that? Is The Globe just going to take a wait and see approach?
How do I know the guy I spoke with wasn’t somebody like the John Lovitz character Tommy Fla-nay’-gan?
“Yes wolf, your credit card information is totally safe. I just discussed this with my secretary Farrah F … er … Lindsay Lohan. Yeah, that’s the ticket !!!”
