Blog dedicado a la formación en todos sus ámbitos: presencial, online, a distancia
Because the PIN info is encrypted, Target tells USA Today, “We remain confident that PIN numbers are safe and secure.”
Without the encryption key used by Target’s external payment processor, that PIN info can not be accessed. Target says this key was never stored on the retailers’ payment systems so it could not have been stolen during the breach.
But if the hackers were able to obtain that key, they would be able to encode dummy debit cards with the stolen numbers and withdraw cash at will from customers who have not changed their PINs since the hack attack.
So, again, if you used a debit or credit card at Target between Black Friday and Dec. 15, it would be wise to change the PINs on any cards you used.
Reuters was the first to report that PIN data had been stolen, but Target denied the story saying at the time that it had “no reason to believe that PIN data, whether encrypted or unencrypted, was compromised.”
“While robust discussions are underway across the nation, in Congress, and at the White House, the question for this Court is whether the Government’s bulk telephony metadata program is lawful,” writes Judge William H. Pauley III in his 54-page ruling [PDF]. “This Court finds it is. But the question of whether that program should be conducted is for the other two coordinate branches of Government to decide.”
The judge holds that the Sept. 11 attacks may have been prevented had the NSA had access to the phone-related metadata it now collects from millions of phone users, but also cautions that such collection could get out of hand.
“The blunt tool only works because it collects everything,” reads the ruling. “Such a program, if unchecked, imperils the civil liberties of every citizen. Each time someone in the United States makes or receives a telephone call, the telecommunications provider makes a record of when, and to what telephone number the call was placed, and how long it lasted. The NSA collects that telephony metadata. If plumbed, such data can reveal a rich profile of every individual as well as a comprehensive record of people’s associations with one another.”
The New York court ruling comes on the heels of a very different decision made last week by a District Court judge in Washington, D.C., where the court held that the NSA phone surveillance program “almost certainly” violated constitutional protections against unreasonable searches.
NSA’s Phone Data Collection Program Lawful, Federal Judge Rules [WSJ Law Blog]
Here are seven of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last two weeks (I was out sick last Friday), picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.
Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Want to see your pictures on our site? Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.
Reader Mike spotted this stack of coupons at grocer H-E-B that are simply a waste of space and paper. “They printed tons of coupons just to sell Dawn at the regular price,” he grumbles. The coupon implies that customers have to buy two bottles in order to get the sale price, so it might even be a worse deal.
Meanwhile, Flickr user jguzlecki spotted this interesting shelf tag at Target.
Now, we know that “as advertised” doesn’t mean that something is on sale necessarily. Perhaps there was something in the circular about how Target sells gift cards, and that earned the card this “as advertised” badge.
A father in Hampton, VA, tells WAVY-TV that he’d purchased a Nintendo DS at his local Walmart on Dec. 23 as a Christmas gift for his young son. But then the son opened his gift and began taking photos with it, and when they went to look at the images, they found the device already contained plenty of racy photos taken by someone else.
“It was a shocker because we had family here, and there were a lot of kids here,” says the dad. “The kids were the ones that discovered those pictures.”
Dad believes — and is probably correct — that these sexy-time images, all with early December date stamps, were taken by someone who had purchased the DS and returned it for a refund, and that Walmart re-shelved the device as new.
“Those things were not deleted from it, so it wasn’t a new product,” says the dad. “It was a used product.”
This isn’t the first time this has happened. Exactly a year ago, we brought you the story of a Colorado family whose Nintendo 3DS from GameStop came loaded with porn aplenty.
While it stinks that his kid got an unexpected eyeful, the Virginia dad may want to consider himself lucky that the box even contained the DS. As we’ve seen too many times, Walmart has a bad habit of re-shelving returned electronics without checking to see if the actual device is included in the return.
As we’ve said before, Walmart and other retailers need to stop automatically re-shelving returned items without putting them through a rigorous check. At the very least, they should be flagging these products in their system so that the original customer can be tracked down in cases like this.
KnowMyApp.org is the product of CTIA, the wireless industry group that we’ve never really associated with being consumer friendly. Regardless, the site does provide some helpful information on just how much of your data plan an app can chew up.
The site currently features the top 50 paid and free apps for the two operating systems, but CTIA says it plans to add more as it continues testing the apps.
For each app listed, the site details what exactly was done with that app during the course of a single day, then extrapolates that data usage to estimate what regular use of that app would look like at the end of a month. It also shows what impact that monthly amount would have on various data allotments.
For example, the iOS version of Google Maps was tested by doing the following three times in one day: “View current traffic, Change map view to satellite, Change map view to 3D, Use navigation for 5 minutes, Perform a search for gas stations, View different distances (Walking, Bicycle) to a nearby gas station.” Do that regularly, and CTIA estimates Google Maps will consume about 324 MB in a month. If you’ve got a 300 MB ceiling on your data plan, that’s a problem.
Not surprisingly, Netflix can be a massive data devourer if used regularly over a wireless network. Just watching about 20 minutes of video a day, along with doing some other things like searching for titles, can ultimately eat up 4 GB of data in a month, according to the site.
Granted, this assumes that the user does this every day and that it’s always over a wireless network. Most people are not watching Netflix videos every single day of the month, and when they do, at least some of that viewing is likely being done over a WiFi network so it doesn’t count against the users’ data plans.
Of course, the wireless industry wants you to be scared about using up too much data and would much rather have you using your cable company’s Internet connection than putting a drain on a wireless network. After all, you don’t get a discount for being under your monthly data limit. So every byte you pay for but don’t use is money in the bank for your wireless provider.
The strangest part of this story was what happened when the couple took the device back to the Target store where it was purchased. They tried to exchange it for another iPod…and that box was also filled with very expensive erasers.
Usually when this happens, a dishonest customer is involved. That customer buys the electronic device, fills the box with another material that weighs the box down, and returns it to the store.
The customer in this case claims that the Target store blamed a distributor, claiming that the switch happened somewhere between Apple and Target. Did it? We hope that Target investigates, and that more people aren’t receiving boxes of erasers when they bought iPods.
Not-so-merry Christmas surprise for local shopper [KFMB]
After first figuring out the ordering deadlines of the country’s biggest online retailers, the folks at StellaService then placed multiple orders — with delivery addresses in different regions of the country — from each of the websites.
According to their results, eight of the 25 retailers tested — Staples, Dell, TigerDirect, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Pottery Barn, Nordstrom, Gap — failed to make good on getting all of the purchases delivered by the deadline.
But while the late deliveries represented a range of retailers, all but one of the missed shipments was handled by UPS.
One company cited by StellaService as going above and beyond was Zappos, which not only pushed the limit by having an ordering deadline of Dec. 23, but upgraded last-minute shoppers’ delivery options to guarantee the packages arrived in time for Christmas. Of the retailers with a Dec. 23 deadline, Zappos was the only one to get all of its parcels delivered on time.
You can see the full results of the test at StellaService’s Happy Customer blog.
