Stupid ebay/amazon question

[Ben Scott]

On 6/29/06, Christopher Schmidt <crschmidt at crschmidt.net> wrote:
> I don't know how likely that is, but there is no technical reason why
> this should ever be a requirement, which means that if this is
> happening, it would be either malicious or ignorant.

  You forgot "apathetic".  A lot of organization know they play fast
and loose with customer data, but just don't care.  Or, at least,
don't care enough to do something about it.  Sometimes they feel a
little bad, I guess.

  I wish I was kidding, but look at the near-monthly news reports
about how some random, big organization had tons of customer
information disclosed, usually because their entire customer database
was on some weenie's laptop or on a public webserver with a root
password of "passw0rd" or something like that.

  "Your web transaction is secure because we use SSL.... too bad
everything *else* is wide open."

-- Ben