Digital detritus of dead companies creates financial trouble

What happens when a credit card processing company goes out of business? In the case of one company, the business may have died, but the data lived on online. Specifically: 19,000 credit card numbers (complete with names, expiration dates, addresses, and even CVV codes) which were stranded in limbo after the company closed up shop.

The problem was compounded by a Google cache of the data, which kept copies of the poorly-secured information even after it vanished from the company's shut-down web servers.

The discovery was made by an IT worker in Australia courtesy of another Google service, Google Alerts, which sends you links to new web pages the search engine discovers whenever they contain terms that you specify. The worker (who asked to remain anonymous in the linked story) received an email alert for a name he'd had an alert set up for, and by simply clicking through the links he discovered the treasure trove of financial data.

What can be done about the problem? The credit card processor is originally responsible for the security hole and should have known better, but as it's out of business now, not much can be done to punish it (though investigations are proceeding). Google's hard to fault here, since it caches just about everything (a very useful service for when sites go down under too much traffic), though some may argue it should have been able to recognize the pages in question consisted of credit card numbers and thus should have been excluded from caching or even indexing in the first place.

Meanwhile, if you want peace of mind you really should take matters into your own hands, and I highly advise everyone to take advantage of Google Alerts themselves. It's easy to set up a daily alert that will let you monitor the web for new pages that include your name. Just visit the Google Alerts page, add your search terms (your name, in quotes, should be enough), and select how often you want to have the alert delivered (once a day is generally fine). You also need a Google account to set it up. Alerts will be sent automatically on schedule thereafter.

Then get ready for at least a few surprises: You might be a little shocked how often people are talking about you on the web... not to mention how many people have your same name.