August 5, 2004

Google Must Be Stopped!

Scary shit as revealed at Slashdot...

Google has added number span searching to their engine, so if you search mastercard 5424000000000000..5424999999999999 for example, Google searches the entire range against its DB and returns credit card #s, sometimes with names, addresses, and other information that you don't want people to know.

Posted at 12:21 PM

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20 Comments

I just tried it with one of my credit card #2(pretty close to maxed out, so reasonably safe.) and it didn't come up with my name. But if I searched the range, would it?

Posted by: karen at 08/05/04 12:46 PM | Reply
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Oh. but if you do that range thing, random people's info DOES come up.

Posted by: karen at 08/05/04 12:47 PM | Reply
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wow, that's so uncool.

Posted by: anne at 08/05/04 1:29 PM | Reply
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Wow, it's really too easy to do this kind of shit.

I found all kinds of valid numbers, addresses, everything. Thank God I'm no filthy fucking thief.

But thanks for the heads-up. Very interesting.

Posted by: JD Stone at 08/05/04 1:32 PM | Reply
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so here's my question: If I knew how to write syware, could I now go and target PCs of all the people who ran the google search (it places a cookie, right?) for their own CC# and get more valid numbers? I'm just suggesting that if you want to find out if you're exposed, stick to ranges.

Posted by: MG Norman at 08/05/04 4:56 PM | Reply
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I meant 'spyware'. Sorry.

Posted by: MG Norman at 08/05/04 4:57 PM | Reply
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Good point about people being able to look up my info. But I pity the fool who tries to steal my money. I will make that person wish they were never born. Ever.

Posted by: karen at 08/05/04 5:56 PM | Reply
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I'm also hoping that I'm protected behind a firewall of some kind.

Posted by: karen at 08/05/04 5:57 PM | Reply
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Thanks for this important info, stereogum. With new advances in technology (or any other field for that matter) there are flagrant abuses.

Posted by: Aloysia at 08/05/04 6:48 PM | Reply
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i wrote google about this. i will let you know if they respond. (they better!!!!!)

Posted by: christine at 08/05/04 7:56 PM | Reply
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This is one time i am glad i have bad credit and they won't issue me a card! Go me go me go me.

Posted by: garybibb at 08/06/04 12:12 AM | Reply
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The first several pages of search results were other sites and blogs talking about this story! After that, sure enough, I found several sites with CC numbers on them.

As creepy as this is, at least none of my cards have an inch of breathing room and wouldn't come close to giving a thief what they want.

So, hooray for not having anything worth stealing, I guess!

Posted by: Puddin' at 08/06/04 6:49 AM | Reply
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Hell No! Like we don't have enough fucking identity theft in the US!!!

Posted by: sweetpea at 08/06/04 11:19 AM | Reply
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That's really, really scary...

Posted by: Alex at 08/07/04 8:18 PM | Reply
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I'm sorry to point out the obvious, but if you're enough of a dumb ass to leave your credit card number posted on a web site, then you deserve to have your shit stolen. So quit your bitchin'.

Posted by: GeekGuyTW at 09/01/04 8:26 AM | Reply
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First of all, Google didn't recently /add/ this feature. It's been there for a LONG time. Second, Google is NOT the problem. Google indexes documents that are linked to from public webpages. The whole point of the article was that careless network administrators had been leaving this important data in HTML files or other documents linked to from public web pages! Google is only a tool; it let's us search for things we could search for anyway, but on a much faster basis. Again, any of the data Google can turn up is found by following hyperlinks on webpages accessible by the entire public.

Christopher Simons
Computer Information Systems major
@ Ivy Tech State College,
Computer Service Technician

Posted by: Christopher Simons at 09/01/04 1:57 PM | Reply
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thanks to christopher simons... there are way too many "oh my gawd, like, this is SO totally bad! i'm going to write them and stop them because they are making the internet like soooo bad!" posts...

grow up youngins... think for a bit. then talk.

Posted by: emphatic at 09/01/04 2:08 PM | Reply
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I found this site when checking this out after reading an article on Yahoo. I found very few pages and none of my numbers. I did find a few cases where someone posted some reviews on Amazon and apparently uses their cc# for their e-name. How dumb is that. Well, you can't fix stupid but I believe this issue is a NON issue except for the double digit IQ crowd.

Posted by: Turbojoe at 09/17/04 3:48 PM | Reply
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