{"id":332,"date":"2006-11-14T15:18:47","date_gmt":"2006-11-14T15:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/blog\/?p=332"},"modified":"2006-11-14T15:18:47","modified_gmt":"2006-11-14T15:18:47","slug":"digiweb-asks-for-credit-card-details-via-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/s\/2006\/11\/14\/digiweb-asks-for-credit-card-details-via-email\/","title":{"rendered":"DigiWeb Asks for Credit Card Details via Email"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was horrified to receive an email from my ISP asking me to email them my updated credit card details this morning. Now, before you go saying ‘no ISP would do that, its obviously a phising scam you fool’<\/em>, it isn’t. I rang them. Since my credit card had expired I gave them my new details first and then complained about the email. The person on the other end of the phone just didn’t see the problem. I proceeded to explain that email is a totally insecure transport medium. She still didn’t see a problem because they were ‘only offering customers an option to email’<\/em>. DigiWeb are an ISP, people expect ISPs to know how the internet works, and if their ISP says it’s OK to email such things then regular users will probably take them at their word. After all, DigiWeb are the experts right? When it became clear that I was not being listened to I asked to be transfered to a manager or a supervisor but was told that DigiWeb don’t take complaints over the phone. What? You don’t even care enough to talk to your own customers? Yet another example of the utter uselessness of Irish ISPs! To cut a long story short I’ve contacted the Data Protection commissioners and am in the process of lodging a complaint.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Below is the email I received:<\/p>\n

\nDear Customer, Please note that the credit card we hold on file for your monthly payments is about to expire. Please contact us on 042 9393310 or email creditcontrol@digiweb.ie with your new expiry date. Kind regards, Digiweb Accounts\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You could argue that they only explicitly asked for the expiry date so at least it wasn’t the whole credit card but I don’t buy that. People should not be encouraged to send sensitive data over email. It sets up an ethos that email is safe and in many cases when people’s card expires they get a whole new card and not just a new expiry data (as was the case with me) and people will take the mail as a request to send the details of that new card via email. There is no warning anywhere in the email not to email sensitive data, just a request for some personal data to be emailed. I don’t think that’s acceptable. Anyhow, as well as contacting the Data Protection Commissioners I also send DigiWeb a reply by email:<\/p>\n

\nHi,<\/p>\n

I would like to draw your attention to a very serious matter with relation to security. Below is an email I received from you which encourages me to email you my credit card details. Are you aware that credit card fraud is a serious problem? Are you aware that email is a 100% insecure medium? You are asking people to transmit sensitive financial data in a totally insecure way! What you are asking people to do is the equivalent of writing your credit card details on the back of a post-card and sending it without putting it in an envelope! Do you think this is acceptable? I certainly don’t! You are an ISP, you should know better! People with little or no computer savvy expect you to know what is best and will follow your advice.<\/p>\n

I pointed this out when I rang to update my details and the person on the phone did not see this as a problem and would not transfer me to a supervisor or a manager. This too is not acceptable. So, since you would not talk to me I felt I had not choice but to contact the Data Protection commissioners to lodge a complaint.<\/p>\n

Regards,<\/p>\n

Bart Busschots.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was horrified to receive an email from my ISP asking me to email them my updated credit card details this morning. Now, before you go saying ‘no ISP would do that, its obviously a phising scam you fool’, it isn’t. I rang them. Since my credit card had expired I gave them my new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7t9xK-5m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartbusschots.ie\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}