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CNBC Just Collected Your Password and Shared It With Marketers (pcworld.com)

SpacemanukBEJY.53u writes: An article published by CNBC on Tuesday offered tips on how to create a secure password, complete with a form that tested submitted passwords. While well-intended, security experts said it exposed passwords to third-party advertisers. Also, the form created to test a password didn't use SSL/TLS, which meant someone on the same network could have sniffed it. Even worse, the tool claimed to not store the passwords, but an acute observer found they were actually being inputted into a Google Docs spreadsheet. CNBC quickly withdrew the article.

2 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. "Just" stop with the clickbait by H_Fisher · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can we please stop with the clickbait headlines? News that's more than one hour old did not "just" happen. Unless you're live-blogging on Twitter, whatever you're posting about is going to sound instantly dated. Moreover, it "just" sounds unprofessional — in terms of journalistic "voice," your news now lacks authority and sounds as if it's being delivered by a teenager.

    I worked in journalism for 12 years, full-time and freelance. The dumbing-down of journalism and the rise of clickbait-style reporting are driving away readers, not attracting them. That's especially true for sites like /. where people do actually, sometimes, expect informative and accurate stories ...

  2. Re:Not a suprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Having recently made a random password generator (http://random.toyls.com/), I [...]"

    Also used http instead of https, and don't forward visitors to https either.
    Great job.