Political Site Slow to Disclose Credit Card Theft
There's an ongoing dispute between the right-wing group ProtestWarrior and a left-wing "hacktivist" accused of breaking in to their servers and accessing the credit card information of 5,000 customers of the group's online store.While that allegation is under investigation (no charges have been filed), ProtestWarrior makes an unusual admission: They discovered the possible theft of customer credit cards in February, but didn't tell any customers until July 5.
The reason we haven't made this announcement earlier is that our customers were already protected and we didn't want to jeopardize the ongoing FBI investigation of Jeremy and his "hacktivist" army.
ProtestWarrior customers weren't protected. They've had no chance to cancel their cards or check bills for fraudulent charges. Making matters worse, many credit card providers only let you challenge a charge for 60 days.
Additionally, any ProtestWarrior customers in California must be informed personally of this security breach under a credit card disclosure law passed in 2003. Failure to do so exposes a merchant to civil liability for damages.
Comments
Rogers, you're making a very incorrect assumption here.
While the website hack was in January, the ProtestWarrior folks didn't discover it until later, and notified the authorities *and* the credit card companies as soon as they found out.
"We also reported the incident to all credit card companies involved to make sure that ProtestWarrior's customers were protected."
The only thing they didn't do was to make a big public announcement, which would have screwed up the investigation of the folks who actually committed the crime.
You need to make a *big* retraction.
I'm going by what they wrote -- they discovered the breach in February. If they update their site to indicate that the credit card discovery was much later, I'll follow it up.
According to a post on IndyMedia, the FBI searched Jeremy Hammond's apartment in Chicago on March 17 in the investigation of this alleged theft.
At that point, ProtestWarrior could have told their customers of the suspected theft of their cards. They waited until July 5.
They waited until July 5 to put the notice _to the rest of us_ on their website.
"The reason we haven't made this announcement earlier is that our customers were already protected and we didn't want to jeopardize the ongoing FBI investigation of Jeremy and his 'hacktivist' army.
"The reason we're posting this now is that Jeremy, in a desperate move, is publicly appealing to the internet community regarding his pending FBI investigation. Using his site www.freejeremy. com, he is trying to solicit donations for his defense fund and generate public sympathy while spreading slanderous disinformation regarding ProtestWarrior and the events leading up to the FBI investigation."
In other words, the IndyMedia folks suckered you.
The only thing I'm citing from IndyMedia is the date of the raid on Hammond's apartment.
...yet you're taking the same line that many of the IndyMedia folks are (and the hackers, too, who were IndyMedia denizens), which is in direct opposition to everything that's been released by the ProtestWarrior folks.
They *did* promptly protect the cardholders, they *did* notify the card issuers, they *did* tell the Feds, and the only people they *didn't* tell were the rest of us (and the criminals, of course).
You're not upset about them not telling the criminals, are you?
They *did* promptly protect the cardholders ...
What are you basing this statement on?
It's not the politician work. There should be a special team whose only work is to find credit card theft.
Mr. Cadenhead,
You originally asked me if "the customers were not notified" until July 5th and I said they weren't.
You wrote in your story at
that "They (ProtestWarrior) discovered the possible theft of customer credit cards in February, but didn't tell anyone until July 5"
You even link to our newsletter at
Is this an honest error or do you have some axe to grind?
It clearly states in the newsletter post on our site (if you bothered to read it) that right after we found out about the breach, we "reported the incident to all credit card companies involved to make sure that ProtestWarrior's customers were protected".
So if you're going to claim that we didn't tell "anyone" about the potential credit card breach even though we reported it to the FBI, the Secret Service, and all of the credit card companies involved and you want to report this story honestly, I suggest you change your wording.
Thanks,
Kfir
As I stated in response to Chad, by "anyone" I meant "any customers." I've edited the entry to make this clear.
If I had an axe to grind, I'd have done so already. My only interest in the ProtestWarrior/Jeremy Hammond issue is your site's extremely slow disclosure to customers.
i think ur gay
ProtestWarrior are fags
That's intelligent....shouldn't you be back writing for IndyMedia?
It is important that people like Jeremy and his associated go to prison and are charged seriously for their crimes.
Wow Rogers, this was the most pointless article I've ever read on the Internet. You definetly have an axe to grind here. Your glasses and your hair are just as outdated as your world views.
Must say if I had a credit card and I was not told of the theft for longer than a couple of months I sure would be outraged. Where is my protection, I forgot, the agency behind the card is solely reponsible for what happens
"yet you're taking the same line that many of the IndyMedia folks are (and the hackers, too, who were IndyMedia denizens), which is in direct opposition to everything that's been released by the ProtestWarrior folks."
You mean crackers right?...Or do you not know the difference?...Or maybe you don't care just as long as everyone who disagrees with you is behind bars...
If I was a customer of ProtestWarrior, I'd be outraged as well, however I believe most of those customers probably share the same slow-witted mind set as the admins who chose not to contact them.
What really gets me is the announcement PW made saying they didn't want to "interfere with the FBI investigation" even though they didn't tell their clients after Jeremy was caught.
Thanks for shining some light with this article.
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