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Fun with Computers (Friggatriskaidekaphobia edition)

Posted by Paul Brennan in Main

April 13, 2007 9:04 AM

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If your plan for getting your taxes done before the looming deadline involves using Turbo Tax's online service, you may want to reconsider. According to NBC 4 in Washington D.C., a customer wanting to check her tax info Turbo-ly, discovered something big and bad by accident. ""I knew immediately how big this was," she said. "This is very, very bad.""

A Turbo Tax customer herself, the woman attempted to access some past filings and the route she took online opened returns for several others with the same last name but different first initials.

"For a bad guy to get this information would mean they could retire rich and happy," the woman said.

She was able to access tax returns for Turbo Tax customers she never met in different parts of the country. On her screen, she found everything needed for electronic filing from bank account to routing digits and Social Security numbers.

"It's clear that she was able to access information that she shouldn't have been able to," said Gordon Whitten of Turbo Tax.


Well, I'm glad that's clear to Gordon, who assures the public this was "a quirk, an individual circumstance as far as we know", and that the online service is perfectly safe to use. If you somehow don't find that reassuring and you've used Turbo Tax online, Blognonymous has some suggestions on what to do.

Taxes traditional partner in unavoidability, death, is also having computer problems. Or at least, the government agency most responsible for spreading death is. Danger Room, Wired's national security blog, reports "the Defense Department just received an F for its cybersecurity efforts on a Congressional report card".

No, this isn't disturbing. Not in the slightest….

I mean, what information does the Pentagon really have to protect, anyhow?


Happy Friday the 13th everyone!

(As for that "friggatriskaidekaphobia" in the post's title, click here for a definition.)

 

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