Googling his credit card number
According to the free newspaper “news” of today (Zurich, Switzerland) page 15, the computer-science Professor Kieron O’Hara, which is concerned about the loss of privacy in the internet age, is advising the editor in the interview to “google regularly one’s name, phone number and credit card number”, to see if this information is to be found somewhere on the net. OMG. I am wondering where this crap comes from. Either is this professor as intelligent as my banana tree, or the editor writing this did the interview in Esperanto, which neither of the two are understanding.
Why is it a bad idea to google one’s credit card number? Just in case you don’t know.
The connexion to the google server is not encrypted. So anybody evesdropping on the path to it could get the information (e.g. at your local provider or your neighbour that just hacked your weak WEP wireless encryption).
There is no guarantee whatsoever about what google is gonna do about the submitted queries. At best it will be stored in one of their database in clear text.
At worst it will appear on a big screen inside the reception room in a google office, on the live query list.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 5:32 pm and is filed under english, geek, pat.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.