philosecurity

I nearly fell off my chair a few weeks ago when fellow security professional Mary Ellen Kennel forwarded me the following link, which she found via Google:

http://prebys.org/Africa/

These two guys went to Africa in 2004 and decided to scan in their driver’s licenses, passports, yellow cards and put them on the Internet, along with their credit card and bank account numbers. That way if they lost anything, they could look it up really easily from anywhere in Africa. Convenient!

What nearly made me fall over, though, was that as it happens both these guys are good friends and former roommates of mine. (Apparently paranoia doesn’t rub off.) Eric was in our living room at the time, so I went downstairs and asked him if he had ever suffered any ill effects from having all of his personal data on the Internet for the past four years. He said nope! No stolen credit card, no financial problems, no identity theft to date.

Stephanie commented that stealing the identity of a man with his driver’s license photo probably wouldn’t be very helpful. Still, I have to wonder if my work as a security consultant actually has any purpose.