Data Breach Idiocy At its Finest: Newspapers Wrapped in Subscriber credit data

[mandy]

Credit and bank card numbers of as many as 240,000 subscribers of The Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette were inadvertently distributed with bundles of T&G newspapers on Sunday, officials of the newspapers said yesterday.

The confidential information was on the back of paper used in wrapping newspaper bundles for distribution to carriers and retailers. As many as 9,000 bundles of the T&G, wrapped in paper containing subscribers' names and their confidential information, were distributed Sunday to 2,000 retailers and 390 carriers in the Worcester area...

Globe and T&G officials said the newspapers have notified the four major credit card companies -- American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa -- of the problem...

full article: http://www.boston.com/business/articles/...y_mistake/

[amy]

Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, said the T&G incident -- which she called ''most unusual" because of how it happened -- underscores the need for companies to focus on more than just online security to protect sensitive information

That might me a good idea. Most problems seem to occur offline. 

[rose]

How could nobody notice?  :