Tuesday, January 23, 2001

Shoppers seize unauthorized discounts at Macys.com Macys.com was victimized by its own 50% discount coupon code that was inadvertently posted at FatWallet.com. The extent of the resulting spending spree was not divulged. "Although mistakes of this kind do happen in the offline world, the speed at which e-commerce moves can make a small glitch turn into a thousand-dollar error." (Note earlier problems involving staples.com and amazon.com.) [Source: Greg Sandoval, CNET News.com, 22 Jan 2001 URL: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-4564219.html; PGN-ed] [Monty Solomon via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 22] 0:00 # G!

Travelocity exposes customer information A security breach at Travelocity recently exposed the personal information of up to 51,000 online travel company's customers who had participated in a site promotion. Customer names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses were revealed because of an inadequately protected directory -- possibly for up to a month. This resulted from new servers cutover from San Francisco to Tulsa. [Source: Troy Wolverton, CNET News.com, 22 Jan 2001 http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-4564919.html] [Monty Solomon via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 21] 0:00 # G!