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'Please Rob Me' -- Credit Card Edition
My colleague Bruce has alerted readers to the perils of tweeting your whereabouts, as made plain by Please Rob Me (which now has its own "Mission Accomplished" banner prominently displayed on its site).
"Oversharing" is ubiquitous in the social networking/social media age. So I'm not sure why I was surprised to find out that there is a service available whereby users can broadcast the charges they're running up on their credit cards.
Welcome to Blippy. Where every time you use plastic at a Starbucks, or, for that matter, at The Pleasure Chest, all your friends get an update.
On Friday, it was discovered that a handful of Blippers had unwittingly notified the world of not only where they were spending their money, but of their credit card numbers:
This on the very day that the company secured $11 million in additional funding. D'oh.
The company insists that, though this information was floating around on the web for several months, it only affected a handful of users. Plus, they've now committed to: "Hire a Chief Security Officer and associated staff that will focus
solely on issues relating to information security." Brilliant idea.
It's not hard to see a class action coming down the pike here, depending on how things play out. This, though, is one where I won't be upset if the lawyers end up with millions and the class takes home nothing. I think a commenter at Venture Beat said it best: "If you used Blippy, if you think people care that you bought a sandwich
or mini-size condoms or whatever, then you deserve this." Amen, brother. Amen.
Posted by Eric Lipman on April 26, 2010 at 12:39 PM | Permalink
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