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.

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Comments (20)
  1. karen  |   Posted on Aug 5th, 2004

    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?

  2. karen  |   Posted on Aug 5th, 2004

    Oh. but if you do that range thing, random people’s info DOES come up.

  3. anne  |   Posted on Aug 5th, 2004

    wow, that’s so uncool.

  4. JD Stone  |   Posted on Aug 5th, 2004

    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.

  5. MG Norman  |   Posted on Aug 5th, 2004

    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.

    MG

  6. MG Norman  |   Posted on Aug 5th, 2004

    I meant ‘spyware’. Sorry.

  7. karen  |   Posted on Aug 5th, 2004

    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.

  8. karen  |   Posted on Aug 5th, 2004

    I’m also hoping that I’m protected behind a firewall of some kind.

  9. Aloysia  |   Posted on Aug 5th, 2004

    Thanks for this important info, stereogum. With new advances in technology (or any other field for that matter) there are flagrant abuses.

  10. christine  |   Posted on Aug 5th, 2004

    i wrote google about this. i will let you know if they respond. (they better!!!!!)

  11. 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.

  12. Puddin'  |   Posted on Aug 6th, 2004

    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!

  13. sweetpea  |   Posted on Aug 6th, 2004

    Hell No! Like we don’t have enough fucking identity theft in the US!!!

  14. Alex  |   Posted on Aug 7th, 2004

    That’s really, really scary…

  15. GeekGuyTW  |   Posted on Sep 1st, 2004

    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’.

  16. 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

  17. emphatic  |   Posted on Sep 1st, 2004

    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.

  18. Turbojoe  |   Posted on Sep 17th, 2004

    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.

  19. Record company EMI sign a deal with the estate of crooner Dean Martin to use the singer’s likeness…

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