Unclear on the concept, plastic edition

Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2017 03:00:00 -0700

This IT pilot fish tries to practice good data security in his personal life as well as on the job — but that doesn’t always work out.

“My wife was going to charge some travel expenses on my credit card during her break at work,” says fish. “So as not to give up my card for the day, I wrote the number, expiration date and security code on a piece of paper.

“As I wrote the 16 digits out, I realized that she was taking this piece of paper to work, and who knows who might see it or what might happen if she were to throw it out? So instead of writing the last four digits, I wrote “xxxx,” and texted them to her instead.

“I thought I had done a decent job in protecting my credit card information — until later that morning, when she texted me saying that there was an issue with one of the charges. Would I mind calling, since she was unable? No problem, I responded. Can you send me the number to call?

“She had written the number on the same piece of paper that had 75 percent of my credit card information on it. Rather than simply texting me the phone number, she took a picture of it with her phone and sent that.

“That meant anyone who may have been snooping on our text messages now had both pieces of the puzzle to figure out my credit card information! At least I didn’t write my name on that piece of paper…”

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