credit card security

[jkinz-+hffLmS/kj4 at public.gmane.org]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 07:21:41PM -0500, Tom Metro wrote:
> 
> If this is for online purchases, I'd look into credit card companies 
> that offer one-time-use/one-merchant numbers, such as Discover, or any 
> card used through PayPal. After finding fraudulent charges on two 
> different cards this past year, I've switched to using merchant-specific 
> credit card numbers. Much like the way I use merchant-specific email 
> addresses. Now if my account data gets leaked, I'll know whose poor 
> security practices to blame and avoid in the future.


If there were a public web site sharing the names of the leaky
merchants with the dates of when breaches occurred I wonder if it would
have any effect on how fast said merchants would address the issue...

You would need to leave room for the merchants to respond,
explaining how the leak happened and what they did to fix it.... 

~assuming any would respond publicly.  I think they would only
respond publicly if they felt they absolutely had to in the
face of vast drops of customer traffic associated with their
site showing up in the reports.



hmm - and a firefox plugin that blinks the user's browser screen
red while playing an mp3 of a siren whenever you visit one of the
compromised sites.... :-)

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