Only an Egghead would shop here
Written: Feb 13 '01
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The Bottom Line
If you feel that your credit card numbers should be encrypted and placed on secure, non-networked computers, instead of stored for years after your last shopping experience, avoid Egghead.
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| Full Review |
I am seethingly angry right now, and I don't know what recourse I have.
It started like this. I went to Australia for my honeymoon in January, and when I came back, my bank account was in 'oops' territory due to a couple of automatic payments I have set up. This is not what I am angry about. Being a slacker, I kept forgetting to get to the bank for the last couple of weeks, and am slightly deeper in the hole as a result. I'm not angry about this either, these are both my fault and I take responsibility for it.
Here is what I am angry about. I am angry because tonight I went to deposit a big fat check into my account via the ATM to cover my overdrafts and to ensure it doesn't happen again for a very long time. And the ATM swallowed my card.
I called the bank and discovered that my card had been eaten for a reason. The reason was that Egghead.Com, who I last shopped with over two years ago, had its servers breached and many accounts were compromised. This included my account. My ATM Visa debit card was listed in my account. Egghead notified my bank, who cancelled my card and reissued me a new one which never arrived here and is lost in limbo. My bank (Union Bank of California) also told me that they had to cancel thousands of debit cards as a result of Egghead's foul up. I have had no letter from Egghead about this. No email from Egghead, no nothing to notify me that my card may suddenly sprout horns and a tail and not function properly.
This annoys the H-E-Double Hockeysticks out of me. To say that I am ticked off is the understatement of the year. I am livid, and I am seething. I am raging, and I feel this way for two reasons.
The first reason is that Egghead never bothered to personally inform me that my shopping experiences with them had been poked into and my name, address, and Visa ATM information were in the hands of a leet cracker creep.
The second reason is that Egghead's security measures need serious looking at. I have not shopped with Egghead.Com for over two years. So I ask you, why was my personal information, including my billing data, still sitting on a net-connected webserver, for the first talented cracker to grab? Any responsible business would get that data off of the connected servers as quickly as possible and store it in a non-networked machine.
At this point I feel I should mention that I have not shopped with Egghead for over two years because as they have 'grown' on the net, their service and speed of delivery have suffered incredibly, and their website has become increasingly fubar, with images often failing to load, or entire orders having to be re-entered when the website barfed. I've attempted to shop the site a few times in the last couple of years and always went away disgusted and ran to CompUSA or Fry's instead.
I only wish I were one of those people who uses Egghead on a regular basis, so that my refusing to shop with them ever again would have some sort of value. Instead I can only rant about it. Go figure.
Final note: This article is in this category simply because I could locate no other Egghead specific category. I am not worried about Egghead auctions, but about Egghead's retail site.
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Member: Jenn Thomas
Location: San Carlos, CA
Reviews written: 98
Trusted by: 46 members
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