Sears Holdings has taken part of its Managemyhome.com web site offline following revelations that the site was making customers' purchasing histories publicly available.
Sears disabled the site's "Find your products" section following criticism from privacy advocates, who said that fraudsters could use information provided by the site to scam Sears customers.
The feature was supposed to be used by customers who wanted "easy access to useful information about products they have purchased," she added.Manage My Home is a community portal where Sears shoppers can download product manuals, find product tips and get home renovation ideas. However, "Find your products" would return purchase information history on any Sears customer, provided the search included the name, phone number and address of the person.
Source: Computerworld, http://computerworld.com