USA Today - June 26, 2002
Site Clues Consumers Into Identity Theft
CardCops.com is a somewhat controversial company that fights credit
fraud by exposing and publicizing web site hacks and online fraud
techniques. The controversy comes up because some are worried that
they show potential crackers and hackers too much detail about how
to do their dirty work.
Maybe they do go too far, but they've recently released an intriguing
free service just for consumers. They allow anyone to type in their
credit card number to match it against a database of 100,000 credit
cards that have been compromised by thieves. Type in your credit
card number? Huh? Is it safe? Are you crazy?
CardCops have been around since the late '90s and work closely with
law enforcement organizations like the U.S. Secret Service. Here's
a quote from Dan Clements, founder of CardCops, "We're creating
a situation where Joe Consumer can check his card on the Internet
to see if it's been possibly abused."
Should you try this out? CardCaps is a legitimate organization and
I trust their security measures, but you should make your own judgement.
Even if you decide to try it, you might have to wait a while —
their servers were maxed out from all the people trying out the
service... Go
to the CardCops web site.
