Boston Globe IT department ...

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

... as dumb as a bag of hammers.

Okay, come on, someone explain it to me. Apparently the Boston Globe used a printout of all their customers' credit card info to wrap newspapers. It would have been better if it were fish. But here's my question: Why did anyone print that information in the first place? Why? And why in hell would they print the credit card numbers in the clear?

Anyhoo, today I cancelled my credit card and ordered a new one.

I just don't get it ...

~~ Paul

[Freakshow]

:dl:

I love seeing stories like this. Helps me keep a very good career going.

[The_Fire]

:eek::jaw-dropp
'Oh ye moronic webmasters......
:eye-poppi
And people wonder why I don't like making "plastic" payments! :boxedin:
SEriously, that is a mistake not even a newbie would make...:boggled:
I almost feel sorry for the Globes IT-department because of the major security revision which will most likely happen now......:D
And:
:dl:

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I figure I better give a link, since the story is somewhat hard to believe:

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/02/01/subscriber_credit_data_distributed_by_mistake/

~~ Paul

[PixyMisa]

This is an insult to bags of hammers everywhere! :mad:

[PixyMisa]

P.S. Sometimes it's good being the only IT person in a small company. I can just say no when someone asks for something dumb, and know that the owner will back me up every time.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Yes, that is a good position to be in, Pixy.

Why, why did they print the report? It's like it's 1972 and they needed a hardcopy backup or something.

~~ Paul

[Soapy Sam]

I'm confused, Paul.

How would you wrap credit card data in fish?

Did I mention I'm head of IT at the Globe?

[a_unique_person]

Yes, that is a good position to be in, Pixy.

Why, why did they print the report? It's like it's 1972 and they needed a hardcopy backup or something.

~~ Paul

When I started work at a big insurance company, there was a massive report that was printed every month, and sent to some department. About two foot thick.

One day the guy who brought it over asked them what they actually did with it. They replied nothing, all they did was throw it in the bin.

[malbui]

When I started work at a big insurance company, there was a massive report that was printed every month, and sent to some department. About two foot thick.

One day the guy who brought it over asked them what they actually did with it. They replied nothing, all they did was throw it in the bin.
As part of my firm's audit approach, one of our first procedures is to identify the reports that management are using for controlling and decision-taking purposes so that we can be comfortable that those reports are complete, accurate, valid, all that kind of stuff. It's very often an interesting exercise to compare the list of reports that management use to the list of reports being run every day or every week or every month, using valuable resources. Some of our clients have suppressed a good half of their frequent reports on the basis of such an analysis.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

How would you wrap credit card data in fish?
The antecedent if it was newspapers. Sorry for the confusion, Mr. Sam.

~~ Paul

[Wudang]

When I started work at a big insurance company, there was a massive report that was printed every month, and sent to some department. About two foot thick.

One day the guy who brought it over asked them what they actually did with it. They replied nothing, all they did was throw it in the bin.

Flashback to the mid-80's when I installed an online alternative to printing at (big computer company) UK. One particular report took 20+ boxes of paper per copy and vans were sent all over the country delivering copies to branches. One guy took it on himself to blag a ride on the vans and find out if the reports were still wanted. People would throw themselves at his feet weeping with joy as they'd been trying to find some way of stopping these reports for years. One chap used his. He ripped off page 1 and dumped the rest. I ran SMF stats on the system and on a busy month something like 20 (probably non-unique) pages were looked at.

[a_unique_person]

SMF? Did you mantain it using SMP/E?