eric’s extremeboredom

In movies, “hackers” usually end up having to perform long drawn-out operations to obtain information about a target. Back in the real world, I am thinking now interesting it would be if they actually had to do that much work…

There was a lady sitting in front of me on the bus this morning making a few phone calls.

First, she called someone about making an appointment and left her name and work phone number on their voice mail system.

Then, she called someone (sounded like a gym or some sort of similar club) about a letter she got informing her that a payment was rejected. She said that her bank canceled her card because someone somehow stole the number and tried to make a large purchase online. She then proceeded to give the guy on the phone her new credit card number and expiration date, in clear earshot of me and who knows how many other people.

After she was done with that, she realized that she actually wanted to use a different card (her ATM card) and gave him that number/expiration date over the phone, on a crowded public bus, too!

So had I had a piece of paper handy I would have had this ladies name, phone number and credit card number (x2). Certainly a google search would have told me the name of the business…and I could probably find the name of her bank from the ATM number…and who knows what other information someone with a lot of patience/motivation could get.

Certainly something exactly like this isn’t very likely to happen all the time, especially with a malicious person right there taking notes, but it certainly shows that the general public’s perception of security and preventing things such as ID-theft could not get much worse.

And I am sure she wonders how someone managed to steal her other credit card.