An SNL Skit? Onion headline?

Eric Norlin seems to be bloging on the Digital ID World site as well as his own site. I'm checking into what's he's posting where and will let you know. Whatever the story, here's a post after my own heart:

I'm sorry, but reading the first paragraph of this story made me think that maybe I was reading the Onion, or watching Saturday Night Live:

“Credit card users, don't fret. Only a small fraction of the 13.9 million credit cards accounts at MasterCard exposed to possible fraud were considered at high risk, the company said Saturday.”

Only a “small fraction” of the 13.9 million accounts were at “high risk”? Were the rest at “medium risk”? And what – *exactly* – is “medium risk” in Mastercard terms? Is “medium” risk equivalent to Defcon 3? If so, is “high” risk equivalent to mutally assured destruction?

The equivocation in this opening paragraph is a wonderful example of a huge PR budget at work. Congratulations to Mastercard. Of course, with the frequency of data loss these days, this all just seems commonplace now (“OOPS! we lost 13.9 *million* account numbers – sorry – hehehehe”).

Yes, I like the idea of sending the PR team repsonsible for this to do a year at SNL – though I think we need them to stay on at MasterCard too – just in case they are needed there as well.

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Kim Cameron

Work on identity.