[This article was originally published on my first blog, strategyden.com; a copy exists on archive.org)]
Just a quick update on the Convio security debacle I wrote about a few weeks ago — the New York Times picked up the story and focused on the poor follow-up response by Convio and the general issue of how database companies deal with security issues.
The article is provocatively titled “Hackers Cracked Charities’ Addresses and Passwords”. This is uncharacteristically ribald wording for the Grey Lady and it echoes the gradual trend of linkbait seeping into the mainstream media.
The article also makes some forceful claims, such as: “A growing number of donors use the Internet to make their gifts, and experts said some charities might have been reluctant to inform them about the breach out of fear that it would affect donations.”
The author didn’t name specific non-profits who might be engaging in this lying by omission, but at other poiints in the article The American Museum of Natural History, CARE, and the Red Cross were mentioned… Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.
The article also offers some new details for anyone following the story, as well as a bit of color commentary from the Non-profit Technology Blog. In any case, it always interesting to see what new wrinkles the Times can eke out when coming a month late to a technology story.
Who knows perhaps next month they’ll cover the Salesforce security breach, though they may not dig deep enough to realize that Salesforce also has non-profit clients.