Convenience vs. Security

There are a couple of well-known issues with computer security these days... the first (which has been mathematically proven) is that no system can be proven to be secure. The second is that security and convenience are two extremes of design, and an individual balance has to be struck between them on each project you create. It appears that I've become victim of one case of a little too convenient... one of my credit cards has been compromised.

Luckily, it looks like it's just the one card... best guess at this point is that one of the vendors I used that card with had a security oopsie on their stored credit card database, then the perps used the information gleaned from that to set up online login credentials with my provider, Washington Mutual, whereafter they changed the addresses and phone numbers to values useful to themselves. The only reason I was aware that anything happened was when I tried to make a purchase online today, and the card bounced.

So, now I'm getting a new card... and am going to likely have a week's worth of fun monitoring/verifying that things stay as they should, because WaMu's coders couldn't conceive that anybody would not want to have online access to their accounts. The hope is that, once I've got my new numbers in hand, I'll be as semi-secure as I ever was... but worst case, I may have to shut down all business with WaMu. The bad address and phone number have already made their way into two of my credit reports, so I get to have that fun, too... here's hoping things don't get too nuts from this.