…During all this monitoring, I wasn’t anywhere near the rider. I didn’t even need to see them with my own eyes. Instead, I was sitting inside an apartment, following their movements through a feature on a Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) website…
This is a security flaw for sure, but it’s not nearly as serious as the article makes it out to be. You have to know the person you are targeting, you have to know which credit card they used to pay for their subway credits, and then you have to know the credit card number of that credit card. If you are in a position to know all that, then you are probably already in a position to stalk them using other/superior methods.
I think it’s exactly as big a deal as the article makes it out to be. Think of abusive partners. Transphobic parents. Waiters or bartenders who want to stalk the pretty girl they just checked out.
I know that the Apple credit card doesn’t have a number printed on it (iirc), and I think some of the payment systems essentially use a unique credit card number per purchase. I’m not sure if those kinds of things would help here.
But this is both dangerous and absolutely idiotic. Someone came up with an idea, so robe’s manager ram with it without talking to legal or security, and it got pushed live. It should absolutely be pulled.