Technology: Who is watching who you are?
Recently reported by the New York Times and many other internet sources, a company working for Mastercard and other credit card companies had a security breach in which 40 Million (yes, that's a lot of credit cards) were possibly exported without permission. Mastercard says the threat is only to 68,000 customers, but from the reports, they mean Mastercard only customers. When we give out our private information in full to a credit company, we trust them to be safe. But the problem is, even the largest companies have to hire smaller companies to take care of the data. Some companies need others to do backups, or to do data warehousing or research on it. Many times this becomes a serious weak point of the system. You have millions of accounts passing over network lines and ending up in places that are not so secure. What lesson have we learned? Trust no one, your information is not safe even at the headquarters of the largest credit card issuer. If you search Google news for combinations of credit, card and theft or expose, you will find numerous instances of thousands of cards being exposed to sources out of the system. Watch your online statements and use secure passwords online.