What NIMROD puts their personal transactions out in the clear like that? [?] [?]
On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Mr. Worf <hellomahog...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > [image: The Gadget Hound]<http://news.yahoo.com/technology/the-gadget-hound> > Talk about an overshare: Blippy exposes credit card numbers > > - Buzz up! > > > Back in January, I blogged about a social networking startup that lets you > share your credit card transactions — all of them, if you're game — with > the world. My big question at the time: Is Blippy taking Web transparency > too far? Well, with the revelation that at least four Blippy users' credit > card numbers are easily accessible via Google, looks like the answer is a > resounding yes. > Just hours after the New York Times website posted a front-page story > featuring > Blippy<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ytech_gadg/tc_ytech_gadg/storytext/ytech_gadg_tc1769/35921831/SIG=11rkih0li/*http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/technology/23share.html>(which > emerged from public beta in mid-January), a curious user decided to > see if you could search for credit card transaction of Blippy users via > Google search. Lo and behold, he found more than 120 of them, along with > some full credit card numbers, VentureBeat > reports<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ytech_gadg/tc_ytech_gadg/storytext/ytech_gadg_tc1769/35921831/SIG=12c727lu9/*http://venturebeat.com/2010/04/23/how-will-credit-card-leak-damage-blippy/>. > Oops. > > How bad is Blippy's privacy breach? Are the credit card numbers of everyone > who ever shared a transaction on Blippy at risk? No, claims Blippy > co-founder Philip Kaplan, who told Brad Stone of the Times (in a follow-up > blog > post<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ytech_gadg/tc_ytech_gadg/storytext/ytech_gadg_tc1769/35921831/SIG=12fr40nsh/*http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/when-over-sharing-leads-to-problems/>) > that it appears only four users had their credit card info exposed. > > How did that happen? Stone says Kaplan explained to him that merchants > "pass along their raw transaction data — including some credit card numbers > — and the site scrubs that information to present just the merchant and the > dollar amount spent." But several months ago, raw transaction information > was in the site's HTML code, and Google retrieved it. > > Kaplan tells Stone that Blippy began disguising the raw data behind the > scenes "early on," > but four Blippy users' data slipped through the cracks — a situation that > "looks pretty bad," Kaplan says. Uh, no kidding. > > The news couldn't come at a worse time for Blippy, which (as VentureBeat > reports) has already closed $12.9 million in funding this year, and is only > now getting its first dose of publicity thanks to the front-page Times > article (headlined in Friday's paper: "Too Much Information? Hah! Sharing > All Online Is the Point"). Of course, I can't really imagine a good time for > the world to learn that your site is publicly exposing the credit card > numbers of its users, even if we're only talking four of them (for now, > anyway). > > And what is the idea behind Blippy, anyway? As I wrote a few months ago > (the old Yahoo! Tech post went down with the now-defunct site, but here's > the cached > version<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ytech_gadg/tc_ytech_gadg/storytext/ytech_gadg_tc1769/35921831/SIG=14cef87ps/*http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:vpbr2st2C5MJ:tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/63890+yahoo+tech+patterson+blippy&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us>), > you can share the latest purchases on your Visa, American Express, or > MasterCard instantly with fellow Blippy users, the point being to "get > side-by-side comparisons of specific products" and "be able to negotiate or > call out a merchant for overcharging" (as Blippy execs told the Wall > Street > Journal<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ytech_gadg/tc_ytech_gadg/storytext/ytech_gadg_tc1769/35921831/SIG=130o5oa46/*http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/01/14/are-you-ready-to-tweet-credit-and-debit-card-purchases/> > ). > > That's a laudable goal, but the method — sharing some or all of your recent > transactions, instantly —might seem like a little too much sharing for > most. And the news that at least a handful of users had their credit card > numbers exposed on the Web — well, that's probably not what a prospective > Blippy user wants to hear. > > > -- > Celebrating 10 years of bringing diversity to perversity! > Mahogany at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mahogany_pleasures_of_darkness/ > > -- "If all the world's a stage and we are merely players, who the bloody hell wrote the script?" -- Charles E Grant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUxw9aUVik
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