Google Search Reveals Credit-Card Numbers

Yahoo News ^ | Sep 16, 2004 | Pam Baker and Ben Baker

[mk2000]

this has to be GWB's fault!

[onyx]

I just tried it and got NOTHING.

[MEG33]

I simply will not place my card number in my computer, any banking info, will not buy over the internet....I am paranoid about stolen identity.

[GrandmaPatriot]

I just tried this and didn't get any credit card information. I can't get google return the same results as this article indicates, but then again I'm no computer genius.

[litany_of_lies]

I just did it with the dots included and got enough to be concerned about, but nothing live (links to pages were 404'd, but perhaps in response to the article).

[maineman]

DITTO, nothing!

[onyx]

GOOD.
I tried AMEX too.

I was fully prepared to be shocked and awed.

[litany_of_lies]

Also, to keep in context, your chances of having your ID stolen by the merchant, whether online or offline, are a great deal higher than your chances of a hacker getting to your card numbers (essentially inside jobs, as the article noted).

Both dangers exist, but the ones you have everyday from using your card anywhere, online or offline are greater.

[Cultural Jihad]

I simply will not place my card number in my computer, any banking info, will not buy over the internet....I am paranoid about stolen identity.

Yet we gladly hand over our cards to sub-minimum wage restaurant workers who take them into the back room for a while. As this article stated, thefts are most likely to happen from workers who are physically given the cards by the customers.

One day I found dozens of stacks of old, bundled credit card receipts lying all over the sidewalk near a dumpter, dumped by a fashionable and upscale retailing company whose secretary thought throwing them into a construction dumpster on a street was somehow secure enough. Some whino had been rummaging through it the next night and hence they became scattered all over the street.

[Cultural Jihad]

The use of dots means their search engine looks for a range of numbers?

[litany_of_lies]

yes, it looks for a range.

[litany_of_lies]

I just put in a string range for Amex and got more than I wanted to see. 142 results, and at least a few looked like they might have live data. Yikes.

[FReepaholic]

I found pdf documents of court cases with credit card numbers and savings account numbers of parties. Damn.

[onyx]

I tried AMEX and got nothing.

[Smartaleck]

Wondering out loud...so to speak,

If you do a search of your card#, aren't you putting it out on the net in the most unsecured way.....your card number is now part of what was researched on Google. Doh.

[mc5cents]

Wait a minute! I just put in exactly what this post says it put in and all I got was a return to about 5 posts from Free Republic!! This is BS.

[pgkdan]

I'm not overly concerned. Credit card users have been exposed to fraud and theft for as long as there have been credit card users. I was in retail management for years and fired numerous people for things like copying credit card numbers, selling carbons of cc slips, pulling cc copies out of the trash. Nothing new.

[litany_of_lies]

I typed exactly the following:


Amex 370100000000000...379999999999999

Just did it again. Got 151 hits (must have used 3711 the first time).

Each number string has a total of 15 numbers in it (not the normal 16 for Visa and MC).

[BJClinton]

I am paranoid about stolen identity.

If you deposit $20 in my paypal account I'll give you a guaranteed way to avoid identity theft.