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Social Search Reveals 700 Comcast Customer Logins
nandemoari writes "When educational technology specialist Kevin Andreyo recently read a report on people search engines, he decided to conduct a little 'people search' on himself.
Andreyo did not expect to find much — so, imagine the surprise when he uncovered the user name and password to his Comcast Internet account, put out there for the entire online world to see.
In addition to his personal information, Andreyo also discovered a list that exposed the user names and passwords of (what he believed) to be 8,000 other Comcast customers. Andreyo immediately contacted both Comcast and the FBI, hoping to find the ones responsible for divulging such personal information to the public.
While the list is no longer available online, analysts fear that the document still lives on in various cache and online history services."
I wonder if that includes both home and business accounts. I'm sure you can Wayback the archive provided you have an original link or precise search terms, but this apparently affects quite a few people although the summary doesn't mention what exactly the revealed username/passwords are to.
...In a nutshell: This is pretty bad, but how deep does it go and can Comcast be held responsible in any way?
If I had to take a guess, I'd say email or online customer accounts (although I don't recall having one during my painful time with Comcast), which either opens up either a financial or spam-exploitable security issue, not sure which.
I'm more interested in the site that did this and the legality of them doing it. There is zero reason why a site needs your password to your e-mail account.
And you believe them about safely handling your password and never storing or selling it for other uses, why?