Web Security

* Your April 22 article, “Flaw Exposes Some Web Shoppers’ Personal Data,” is truly scary. If a merchant stores all of his customer data in the same insecure database, then phoned or faxed credit card numbers are just as vulnerable. It would seem that payment by check is the only secure way to pay but it still exposes one to telemarketers who could raid the database for free mailing lists.

Do we now need--God forbid--government Internet security inspectors? I wonder whether your article hasn’t given some hackers ideas that hadn’t occurred to them yet?

GARRY S. BRODY

Los Angeles