Are your PPC Accounts Secure?
Following hot on the heels of the new PCI Security Standards Council latest release from the beginning of October, I truly find it amazing that whilst the financial bodies are getting their act together, there are certain areas where internet account security is still in the dark ages.
I refer specifically to a recent episode where a Google Adwords PPC account was hacked and had a brand new campaign started which consumed £5,000 in 6 hrs. This was totally outside the normal running of the account. If it had been activity on a credit card, the owner of the card would have been contacted by telephone very quickly.
I do have to give some credit to Google at this point, they did react reasonably well once alerted and their fraud team stepped in to identify the issue and establish it was not of the account holders doing.
However this raises a very important issue. Google’s security is based on an elementary user name and password system, if this become compromised there is no other level of security to prevent the creation of new campaigns, no restriction to accessing the daily spend limits or even to protect account holder information, although thankfully full credit cards are not displayed in the account area.
Maybe it’s time Google, Microsoft and Yahoo implemented a little more security online – I’m sure we’d all appreciate it.
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04.11.2008.
