35,000 Ron Paul supporters demonstrate trust

There is nothing as fly-by-night as a political campaign. By this time next year the RonPaul2008 campaign will be history. Yet yesterday, in a bizarre commemoration of the terrorist Guy Fawkes, Ron Paul's campaign raised over $3.8 million in contributions through this online form.

I am sure most commentary this morning will be on the overwhelming support Ron Paul is garnering on the Internet. But I could not help being a little paranoid when I visited the donation site yesterday. The Ron Paul campaign has an admirable privacy policy and they even took the extraordinary measure of contracting with HackerSafe to scan their website daily for vulnerabilities. Even the Thawte certificate would normally make me feel "these guys know what they are doing".

But how many of those 35,000 donors checked the URL carefully before providing their credit card information as well as the name of their employer? Was it a phishing site they were visiting? And what assurance do we have that the campaign does not store that information on someone's laptop that will be stolen from their car when they are partying at the next Ron Paul campaign stop?

I personally have pretty high confidence in online storefronts such as Amazon, or even iTunes. Those are businesses that are here to stay and struggle daily to be compliant with the Payment Card Industry standards. But a political campaign site? I only hope they know what they are doing. A data breach could spell disaster.