Democrat site exposed donor info

A glitch in the California Democratic Party's Web site exposed the names, addresses and credit card numbers belonging to 54 party contributors. The flaw also meant Web users could rifle through a flood of other documents intended to be private, including comments emailed to the party. The information was pulled from the Web site on Thursday after MSNBC.com called party officials.

Anyone with a Web browser could have looked through files on the party's Web site, including digital forms that had been used to make donations to the party. While most of the donations were from last year, there were records for donations made as recently as this week.

"Fortunately, we actually don’t get a lot of donations that way," said a party official who asked not to be identified. "Still, that doesn’t excuse the compromise of our security... Credit card records are supposed to be deleted after they are processed. This is scary."

Several of the donors told MSNBC.com that they had been called directly by a Democratic Party official, who apologised for the incident. None of them reported discovering fraudulent charges to their cards, so the information might not have been obtained by members of the computer underground.

Have your say instantly, and see what others have said. Click on the TalkBack button and go to the Security forum.

Let the editors know what you think in the Mailroom. And read what others have said.