important
The other day for various reasons I Googled the name of someone. It's an unusual name, and there was only one hit, on some anonymous web site. When I clicked the link, there was almost nothing there, it looked like just a placeholder web page. So I went back and looked at the Google cached page. And what came up was a long list of credit card numbers, with names, expiration dates, and addresses. It was obviously some hacker gang's hidden stash. The text on the page was in Thai or Vietnamese, but part of it was directions on how to interpret the data.
I've already contacted Google about this. I thought about telling the person I was looking up, but their credit card had already expired so there's not much point. I'm considering contacting the people on the list whose cards haven't expired. All these records have email addresses… I assume this was all stolen from some online merchant. But I'm not sure how I would respond if I got an email telling me this… someone might think that I'm involved in a scam of some sort, and send the authorities after me. So I'm kind of torn.
I suggest to all of you that you Google your credit card numbers to see if they turn up.