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Newspapers Wrapped in Credit Card Data
Buzzy's Roast Beef writes "The Boston Globe reports that bundles of newspapers in Worcester, MA were distributed wrapped in paper which contained subscriber credit card information for 240,000 customers. Those of you paying by check needn't worry; account and routing details for 1,100 customers paying by check were also given out like candy." From the article: "Larkin said the newspapers were first notified of the security breach on Monday by a clerk at a Cumberland Farms store. It took until late Monday for officials to confirm the data on the back of the paper were credit and debit card numbers. Senior management learned of the security breach yesterday morning, Larkin said. The company put out a news release late yesterday afternoon."
It should be a no brainer that financial information (not just credit cards) can only be access by the finance department, and any waste paper in the finance department must be disposed of by professional data destruction companies.
The article explained the mistakes, which were caused by aborted print jobs, only those printed documents were in the bin for recycling!
At least the the newspapers have now added a safeguard to the computer system so only the last four numbers of credit and debit cards can be printed.
Uncensored Google results requested and delivered by email
1-888-665-2644 is their hotline "for customers to call to learn whether their financial information may have been distributed."
Also:
"As an extra precaution, newspaper officials also urged subscribers to contact their credit card companies if they are concerned about unauthorized transactions."
This is a very serious problem
Subscribe for the articles, stay for your neighbor's credit card.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Why does these data need to be printed at all? What possible need is there to see these numbers on paper?
and you wonder why newspapers have been struggling recently. The price one has to pay to have a subscription is just too much.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
The nice thing about being an honest guy like Quinn is that the crooks never believe you.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Anyone up for doughnuts? a couple of my buddies from Boston are paying... Michael
In case anyone else was wondering (FTA):
The Globe and T&G financial information was inadvertently released when print-outs with the confidential information were recycled for use as ''toppers" for newspaper bundles. A topper, placed on top of a bundle of newspapers, is inscribed with the quantity of papers in each bundle and the carrier's route number.
I don't buy it for the pictures, I only read it for the occasional misprinting of hundreds of thousands of credit card information. *YOINK*
If big boobed women work at Hooters do one legged women work at IHOP?
Why was this information even printed out? I can't think of any reason that they would need to print full credit card numbers out. This sounds like an incredibly foolish thing to have happened.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
I clicked on the link in TFA, and got a page displaying an ad. 'For what?' you may ask.
The ad was for American Express. ^_^
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
The newspapers will turn over the card numbers of subscribers who may have been affected to the companies upon request. As of last night, Mastercard and Visa have asked for the details. The newspapers are doing the same thing with banks of customers who may be affected.
They will only turn the numbers over upon *request* and only MC and Visa have requested it? WTF?!
Everyone knows the newspaper industry is struggling to compete with the Internet, but they're really reaching nowadays, emulating the net's security breaches as well..
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Circulation and accounting are connected like two wrestling squid. Every night a whole series of jobs are run referencing all kinds of billing information to determine whose subscriptions are paid up to the point where they qualify to get a paper in the morning. So all the customer card/account numbers are processed by the circulation side, and sent in cash batches to accounting.
So you see there is a financial subset inside circulation that deals with that billing info, which is why they have access to it. The reason it doesn't go straight to accounting is because, in most papers, accounting deals almost exclusively with advertising revenue and billing, which is a lot more complex than 15 bucks a month, or whatever the news subscription rate is, which gets billed automatically.
All that being said, it took some kinda dumbass to dump that info out on the toppers, and a whole crew of dumbasses down the line to attach that information to the paper. Most places don't put anything like personal information on the toppers for papers they're distributing, so it should have been obvious to anyone that there had been a mistake...There are a LOT of people who should have noticed something was wrong.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Apparently the Boston Globe Doesn't comply with the Payment Card Industry standard, found here: http://usa.visa.com/business/accepting_visa/ops_ri sk_management/cisp.html
Specifically these sections:
9.10 Destroy media containing cardholder information when it is no longer needed for business or legal reasons:
9.10.1 Cross-cut shred, incinerate, or pulp hardcopy materials
9.10.2 Purge, degauss, shred, or otherwise destroy electronic media so that cardholder data cannot be reconstructed
nothing
Totally retahded! Who's up for a soda down at Friendly's?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
So I had to cancel my card and get a new one.
It's too bad the Herald is such a rag or I'd drop my subscription today. Maybe I will anyway and just get my news off the web like everyone else.. but I so love to curl up with my coffee and paper on sunday mornings...
I recently got a CD from H&R block to use when doing my taxes. Turns out that H&R accidentaly printed my social security number on the mailing label along with a string of other 'tracking numbers'. They sent a letter appologizing about it and saying that it had happened to a number of their customers. I still wonder why the shipping/printing department at H&R Block would have access to social security numbers at all.
In addition to the phone number that other people have posted, there's a website (no hold time) that you can check to see if you've been exposed. You'll need to supply your home phone number and zip code:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/cclookup
and yes, I'm on the list....
Juiced? Or Not?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere