Glitch Found in Canada Post’s Site

One of the computer glitches on the Canada Post site has revealed information from many small businesses to potential identity thieves. The scam was found in the second week of December 2007 when the owner of a small business from Vancouver was carrying out a Yahoo! search of the name of his company.

As per this fellow, the first link produced by Yahoo! had his login name and password for the 'Sell Online' site of Canada Post. Further, this gentleman also found that by just a slight change in date in his web browser address bar, several sites can be accessed with login records that reveal attempts and usernames to sign in passwords on the site of Sell Online.

The man claims that this bit of information shouldn't be there in public realm. This can lead anyone with his password could access his Visa card number and details of customer shipping, which is linked to the site. He was speaking to Globe and Mail, as reported on December 17, 2007.

Francois Legault, spokesperson of Canada Post, informed that agency does not believe in the old login records and passwords which pose no threat for its customers, as reported by 680 News on December 17, 2007. Mr. Francois also said that the federal agency that gives all its IT services to third parties, like IBM and Innovapost, had already paid their attention to this problem, as per Globe and Mail.

However, a Yahoo! search of the cached sites carried out on December 14, 2007 tells about more attempts of login and usernames of Sell Online. Mr. Francois also admitted that it is not possible for them to discover and erase all daily cached files, but he assureed that with time, they would expire. He also added that they are confident of minimal threat that someone (hacker) can make use of this data to pilfer identities.

A law professor at the University of Ottawa, Michael Geist, said that such kind of details would appear to the fraudsters as a potential treasure. He also added that generally users use similar usernames as well as passwords across several websites, as per the news by Globe and Mail on December 17, 2007.

» SPAMfighter News - 1/3/2008