Comments on: Story on NAPHSIS Breach - Disappears!

By: Jack J

Jack J — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:44:51 +0000

This is not a real AP story. There is nothing in it related to Global Warming, the Ozone hole, Greenhouse Gases or endangered plants/animals. Also, there isn’t anything in the story about how this is president Bush’s fault. All real AP stories contain at least one of the above subjects, usually in the next to last and last paragraph.

By: Steve R.

Steve R. — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 19:30:53 +0000

Whether the above NAPHSIS story was true or not, the
Washington Post reported on March 30, 2007 that “At least 45.7 million credit and debit card numbers from customers in the United States, Britain and Canada were stolen over a period of several years from the computers of TJX, the discount retail giant disclosed in a regulatory filing this week.” … “The computer breach is significant not only because of its scope but also because the hacker or hackers had access to the decryption tool used to decipher sensitive encrypted information and an ability to intercept data as shoppers’ credit transactions were being approved.” Seems that private industry also needs to work a bit on improving their security.

By: David McElroy

David McElroy — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 17:42:56 +0000

I’m not sure if this is a fairly obscure April fool’s joke or not, but it’s not a real AP story. A real AP story wouldn’t have two spaces between each sentence. That’s not how typeset copy is done but is a holdover from the days when typing was taught with the assumption that type was monospace (as on old-fashioned typewriters). In addition, an AP writer almost certainly wouldn’t have made the statements in the second graf without some form of attribution (since this is a hard-news story instead of an analysis). There’s also at least one minor punctuation error in a quote, but AP copyediting has gotten so bad that that part COULD be legit.