Here’s an investigation that started after a tweet complaining about inadequate security. Mof Gimmers reports:
Those exciting folks at The Information Commissioner’s Office are going to investigate Tesco over the way they protect the privacy of their customers online.
The ICO probe comes on the back of claims from security experts who have a number of issues with the retail behemoth’s website. Apparently, Tesco aren’t storing your passwords properly, according to the magnificently monikered Troy Hunt. He revealed that he’d got an email from Tesco that contained his password in plain text, which means that they’re probably not storing your passwords cryptographically.
There’s also concerns that Tesco aren’t using HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) which makes customers more vulnerable to phishing attacks and data theft.
Read more on Bitter Wallet. Having observed the initial tweets and Tesco’s responses on Twitter, I was somewhat surprised that they kept defending their security instead of acknowledging that sending passwords in plain text is just not a good thing. It just seemed to go downhill from there….