Big Brother Website Exposes User Details

By Greg McNevin

April 24, 2007: Network 10’s beleaguered Big Brother is under fire again this week, after significant glitches on its official website exposed personal customer data.

Following last week’s revelations by Behind Big Brother that the official site failed to use encryption to secure its credit-card sign up page, the latest troubles centres on identity management problems on the site.

While the full extent of the issue is not yet known, registered users have reported that names, phone numbers, addresses, emails and more were able to be viewed by other registered users.

Reports of range from users being signed out unexpectedly to signing in as normal only to find that clicking through to another page would make them appear signed in as someone else altogether.

According to smh.com.au, the Behind Big Brother fansite has warned its readers to not login to the program's official site until the problems are fixed. This itself will not be a problem as Network 10 has suspended the login and register options on the official site for now.

It is not known whether or not credit information has been exposed, however, an unencrypted payment page and insecure login system already raises enough concern.

It seems that another day brings another privacy breach headline. Glitches and human error will continue to happen, however, their impact can be controlled with better information management and less “near-enough” security measures.

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