Here’s your online security tip of the day, one that actually pains me to type because of what it implies about the future of the human intellect: Don’t take a picture of your credit card or debit card and post it on Twitter, Instagram, or any other part of the Internet you’ve somehow learned to use despite your stunning lack of basic decision-making skills.
Twitter’s schadenfreude machine has recently discovered an account called “Needadebitcard,” whose sole purpose is to retweet messages in which users link to pictures of their own debit cards or credit cards. Since it was created in May, Needadebitcard has found and posted dozens of examples of Twitter users who display their credit card or debit card details in a photo, along with messages such as “So I kinda broke my debit card” with a picture of cracked but very legible card from TD Bank. Or “Ok…so the last time I saw my credit card it was here” along with a picture of a small child with a platinum credit card from Barclays bank in his mouth, all digits entirely visible. Or my favorite, simply, “MY CREDIT CARD!” alongside a crisp photo of a card from the National Bank of Kuwait.
To several users’ credit, many of the posted links seem to have been pulled from Twitpic or Instagram after Needadebitcard discovered them or other Twitter users pointed out the stupidity of posting private financial information on the public Web. But plenty of less helpful users have posted notes such as, “Well done. Now I think I’ll just go shopping,” or “Nice job who is gonna order some nikes now lol” or another, in response to a user showing off her new Hello Kitty card: “Is there a hello kitty security code on the back too?”
Needadebitcard follows in the footsteps of other experiments aimed at showing the dangers of social media oversharing, such as PleaseRobMe, WeKnowWhatYou’reDoing, and ICanStalkU. But while those projects aimed to emphasize slightly more subtle lessons such as the failure to use privacy settings on Facebook or the need to remove location-revealing metadata embedded in photos, Needadebitcard offers its victims/students a simpler message in its Twitter account description: “Please quit posting pictures of your debit cards, people.”
Well put.