San Francisco Chronicle
Blippy, the social network for people who want to publicize their purchases, got in big trouble yesterday for publishing some of its users credit card numbers. But by mid-afternoon, Blippy had announced the problem was taken care of and that the situation was "a lot less bad than it looks."
Well, it still looks really bad.
With the help of an SAI reader, we found Blippy was still making at least one debit card number available to scamsters Google searching for the terms "site:blippy.com +outstanding." We've pasted a screenshot below.
A Blippy spokesperson agreed with us yesterday that these kinds of privacy mistakes are a "nightmare scenario" for Blippy.
Rationale people would assume that two days of publishing user's credit card and debit card numbers would be death blow for a social network designed for people who want to publish the purchasing history.
We're not so certain. The very fact that anybody uses Blippy, even before this week's cluster, suggests to us that there are lots of people with very little concern for their privacy. Some people would even suggest those types are just being realists, that any sense of privacy on the Internet is an illusion anyway.
The reader who spotted this info asked us not to use his name. We asked him if he was associated with Blippy or any of its competitors. He told us, "no connections whatsoever beside being a user."
"I just don't want problems with authorities because of the credit card numbers or anything. I don't think its a felony since it's google publishing this information but I wouldn't want to worry like the guy who sold the iphone 4g you know!"
Well, it still looks really bad.
With the help of an SAI reader, we found Blippy was still making at least one debit card number available to scamsters Google searching for the terms "site:blippy.com +outstanding." We've pasted a screenshot below.
A Blippy spokesperson agreed with us yesterday that these kinds of privacy mistakes are a "nightmare scenario" for Blippy.
Rationale people would assume that two days of publishing user's credit card and debit card numbers would be death blow for a social network designed for people who want to publish the purchasing history.
We're not so certain. The very fact that anybody uses Blippy, even before this week's cluster, suggests to us that there are lots of people with very little concern for their privacy. Some people would even suggest those types are just being realists, that any sense of privacy on the Internet is an illusion anyway.
The reader who spotted this info asked us not to use his name. We asked him if he was associated with Blippy or any of its competitors. He told us, "no connections whatsoever beside being a user."
"I just don't want problems with authorities because of the credit card numbers or anything. I don't think its a felony since it's google publishing this information but I wouldn't want to worry like the guy who sold the iphone 4g you know!"
