Dear Walmart: Your Online Security Blows
Gather around kids, this is gonna be a fun one. I might even get sued, finally. Yay!!1
Recently, on some random news station, I heard about Walmart’s new “Money Card” which is nothing more than a prepaid Visa card. Just like any other such card, it has a website where you can check your balance, add funds to your account, etc. Alternatively, you can have your account information stolen, be exposed to hardcore XXX porn, or line the pockets of a bottom-feeding douche bag while trying to reach the site. Why? Because Walmart, just like most companies, is nothing short of retarded when it comes to internet security and protecting their brand in the online world.
But, but, but… Their site says that it’s secure. It even has a nifty little seal on it from Thawte verifying that it’s protected by RC4 128-bit encryption.
Yeah, so what? I said that all those evil evil bad bad things could happen to a person while trying to reach the site. I never said that they’d actually make it there. Your good ol’ Uncle Buck or Aunt Charlene who’s not too savvy on that there interweb, but falls perfectly into the demographic of folks who would have a Wally World prepaid money card, is likely to mistype the web address. That’s why any security-minded company who wants to protect their customers and brand’s image would / should at the very least register all of the most common typo domains when setting up shop on a new domain – especially if it’s a financial kinda deal. In Walmart’s infinite wisdom, they did no such thing.
After hearing about this new Walmart card and the accompanying website, I checked to see if they had registered and were forwarding over traffic from one of the most common typos: the full web address prefixed with a “www”. Typing out “www” and then forgetting or simply missing the dot afterwards is commonplace among eTards and fast typers. Sure enough, wwwwalmartmoneycard.com was wide open. So, I registered it. Just for good measure, I went ahead and registered almartmoneycard.com today too. Missing the first letter of a domain is also pretty common. Luckily for Wally World, I snagged those domains with the sole intent of using them as an example for this blog entry. This could have played out much differently…
