Boston Globe Incident: Major Breach Exposes Subscriber Credit Card Data

Two Massachusetts papers - the Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette - have apologised after exposing the credit card details of up to 240,000 subscribers. Most of those affected were Globe readers. Information security breaches by major US corporations are becoming an almost weekly event but the breach involving the two papers, both part of the The New England Media Group owned by The New York Times, was especially boneheaded.

The Telegram & Gazette (T&G) handles the distributes of both papers in the Worcester area. It recycles paper internally for use in wrapping bundles of paper sent out to retailers, all very environmentally friendly. But last Sunday delivery routing slips for an estimated 9,000 bundles of papers in the Worcester area were printed on the back of financial reports containing credit card details of subscribers to both papers (who share the same computer system). The addresses of an estimated 1,100 T&G subscribers who pay by cheque were also exposed.

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