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Blu-ray Update Sent To User Via Credit Card Records
wmoyes writes "Back in September I ran into a Best Buy store to buy a Samsung BD-P2550 Blu-ray player. I didn't give the clerk my name, telephone number, or address, just my debit card. The player has sat happily in my living room without ever being networked or registered. Today I was shocked to find a package waiting for me at home from Best Buy — inside was a firmware update CD for the player. I used to think Windows Update was scary, but Samsung's update service tracked me to my house using the mag stripe from my bank card. Has this happened to any other Blu-ray owners?" Or is there a simpler explanation?
The 'update' DVD came from Best Buy, not the manufacturer- of course Best Buy has access to your home address, via your credit card. Samsung probably just shipped a bunch of discs to Best Buy, asking them to mail them out to owners of the player. No big conspiracy or identity theft going on, so relax.
That might not be as sure-fire as you think...
http://newsmine.org/content.php?ol=security/police-militarization/bestbuy-shopper-arrested-for-two-dollar-bills.txt
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
A few years ago there was an interesting device being sold that acted as an email dumb terminal. The device was sold sans any real license but the expectation by the vendor was that you would sign up for their service since otherwise the hardware was "useless". Except that folks figured out how to hack it and turn it into a remote terminal for various OS. I was interested....
I trotted down to my local Circuit City only to find that many others were also interested and that they were sold out. No worries, they let me go ahead and buy one and would let me know when stock arrived so that I could pick it up.
Meanwhile the company figured out what was going on and began trying to stop efforts to repurpose their hardware - unsuccessfully. I got a letter in the mail from the company a few weeks after I had made my purchase at CircuitCity. The letter was informing me that they had decided to change the license terms on their hardware - after my purchase, that signing up for their service was "mandatory", and that if I did not do so within X number of days or receiving my device they would CHARGE MY CREDIT CARD.
Now, I had never contacted this company, I had no intentions of ever dealing with them or of buying their service, and I had not shared my contact information with them. CircuitCity however HAD shared my name and home address with them and if the letter was to be believed was also willing to share my credit card account information to facilitate a charge! I trotted back down to the CircuitCity, canceled my order, and demanded an explanation - naturally they had NO clue.
I was beyond angry to say the least and fired off a letter to CircuitCity HQ. Their response was that no way did they share my CC information with this 3rd party but they said nothing about having shared my HOME ADDRESS! I let them know that I would never shop in their stores again and have told this story more times than I can count - it's been YEARS and I have held true to my promise not to give them a cent. Seeing them go under warms my heart - the jerks. The sad thing is that I nearly made this purchase with cash, I wish I had!
As a side note, the CircuitCity I went into was one I'd never visited as it was closer to work and not my home. When I gave them my phone number they had my complete address on file! Turns out that my girlfriend's daughter had shopped there about 3 years prior and made a single purchase. They STILL had our address on file tied to that phone number when I made my purchase. So yeah, these companies do cough up data and they also hold onto it a REALLY long time - thank you TJMax!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Actually, there is nothing special about checks, anyone can print them up as long as they have the right account and routing information (no special printer is necessary or anything). Quicken can print them. Excel can print them. Technically, you could write your own software for it too.
In France, when the banks started increasing their fees for getting your checks printed, there was an annoyed silent protest. We would fold the checks so that they couldn't go through the machines. We would write checks using plain notepad paper writing everything by hand (including the bank information and routing number, no bar code necessary). The merchants and the banks had to accept those checks. There was a law that said that as long as all the information was correct, it was valid as any other check. So the banks accepted the checks, thereby increasing their manual processing costs, and eventually they reduced the fees for printing checks (because having cheap printed checks was as much for *their* convenience as it was for ours). Now, I'm not saying an handwritten would work in the US, the Federal Reserve in the US probably has its own rules for clearing checks, but at least, if you open Quicken or any financial software, you should see how easy it is to print your own checks from your own bank.
If anything is a problem, it's actually those special anti-counterfeiting checks. Those give the consumer a false sense of security. And they're only as marginally useful as separating the checks that must be checked more thoroughly from the checks that "look" normal, so they're still useful and every little bit helps where it comes to security I assume -- but it's at the expense of keeping the average consumer in the dark.