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A list of user names and passwords for customers of Comcast, one of the nation's largest Internet service providers, sat unprotected on the Web for the last two months. The list was 8,000 lines long, but Comcast said late Monday that just 700 of those lines contained information for active customer accounts. Kevin Andreyo, an educational technology specialist in Reading, Pa., and a professor at Wilkes University, came across the list Monday on Scribd, a document-sharing Web site. Mr. Andreyo was reading a recent article in PC World entitled "People Search Engines: They Know Your Dark Secrets… And Tell Anyone," when he was inspired to find out what information about him was online. He searched for his own e-mail address on the search engine Pipl. The list on Scribd was one of four results, and it also included his password, which was a riff on his love for a local sports team. Statistics on Scribd indicated that the list, which was uploaded by someone with the user name vuthanhan2004, had been viewed over 345 times and had been downloaded 27 times.

"A Concord, New Hampshire, financial services company is sending data breach notification letters to customers after discovering that shared passwords, set up to simplify administrative functions nearly 10 years ago, could have exposed the private data of 1.2 million customers."

Shared administrative passwords lead to privacy breach notification of 1.2 million customers. Nobody out there still using such bad process! Right?

Social networking users are more vulnerable than ever and taking more risks with their online privacy. According to the 'Bringing Social Security to the Online Community' poll by AVG, while the social networking community has serious concerns about the overall security of public spaces, few are taking the most basic of steps to protect themselves against online crimes. Participants indicated concern over growing phishing, spam and malware attacks, and nearly half of those surveyed are very concerned about their personal identity being stolen in an online community. Despite widespread use of social networks at home and/or at work, 64 per cent of users infrequently or never change their passwords on a regular basis, while 57 per cent infrequently or never adjust their privacy settings. Further, 21 per cent accept contact offerings from members they do not recognise, more than half let acquaintances or roommates access social networks on their machines, 64 per cent click on links offered by community members or contacts and 26 per cent share files within social networks. As a result of this widespread proliferation of links, files and unsolicited contacts, nearly 20 per cent have experienced identity theft, 47 per cent have been victims of malware infections and 55 per cent have seen phishing attacks.