Monday, November 26, 2007

Credit Card Companies as Tony Soprano

For many, many, many years, my husband and I used to watch 60 Minutes religiously on Sunday nights. At some point in time--and I'll guess that it has been easily the last 7, maybe 10 years, we've not watched it at all. In general, we don't watch much TV. I suspect that our lapse in 60 Minutes coincided with a lapse in one of our favorite follow-on shows. A long introduction into telling you that we watched it last night.

I was particularly struck by the segment on credit card safety and the stupidly easy way that hackers can get your credit card information. How? Wireless networking. The hackers can get rather easily obtainable software (which the safety expert driving Leslie Stahl around was able to do) and read the information through lurking in the parking lot. WAP is a safety protocol that has long been infiltrated by hackers. There's another protocol that is safer, but it is expensive. TJX's Marshall's stores was breached in a big way.

The Shakedown: This thought occurred to me last week, but it cemented with this 60-Minute segment. Your and my sensitive credit information is kept by third parties, yet somehow WE collectively are responsible for checking for breaches. Moreover, we get the privilege of paying for credit protection and identity protection due to information collected and mishandled by others.

I don't know about you, but I feel like it is THEIR responsibility to protect for this sensitive information, and THEY ought to offer such informational reporting (credit history) and PROTECTION at their cost, rather than making us responsible for it.

I certainly will be very selective about where I shop and what I use after seeing this segment. I'm beginning to resent the power of the financial services industry.




Powered by ScribeFire.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

< I don't know about you, but I feel like it is THEIR responsibility to protect for this sensitive information, and THEY ought to offer such informational reporting (credit history) and PROTECTION at their cost, rather than making us responsible for it. >

AGREED!

Anonymous said...

It is their responsibility, but they don’t like to acknowledge.

Not upgrading security to WEP is irresponsible and an example of “penny wise, pound foolish.” It’s NOT that expensive and some of the competition had upgraded.

Unfortunately, the public becomes the victim and bears the costs when a company doesn’t take the necessary steps to protect their customers’ information.

But things may change if we aggressively challenge those who don’t take proper security measures.

Within the past 2-3 years, there was a case of an identity takeover involving an individual from Pittsburgh. He discovered someone had assumed his identity and had taken out a Home Depot card in a different state. He notified HD, but they ignored him, again and again. Yet, HD attempted to collect from him, again and again.

The good news: He sued and won a judgment vs. HD, which cost them time and money including attorney fees as well as their reputation. Wasn’t Nardelli running HD then?