If you unexpectedly receive a replacement credit card in the mail...

...it means that your bank had been breached, and your account information may have been leaked.

It is much cheaper for your bank to incur the expenses related to issuing you (and anywhere from few hundred to few hundred thousand others) a new card (and/or new account number) - it is a bulk, fire-and-forget process - than to expose themselves to further liability trying to cover things up.

Don't forget to update your recurrent payments, and keep praying that it's just your card or account number have been compromised, and more substantial pieces of data such as your mother's maiden name or last four of your SSN. Good luck.

UPDATE: If they're nice, they let you know they've been breached. In California, they are required to be nice by law.

Bigger Picture: When To Trust The Bank

The hilarious story of a lawyer suing Citibank for not stopping him from losing money in Nigerian Scam is making rounds on Internet. There are many articles covering the topic, but I'm going to link to the article at TechDirt, for it makes a point that has farther reaching consequences than others (that I've read, that is).

While it's easy to mock the lawyer for getting tricked, the basic version of the scam and this more sophisticated version both rely on a very unclear part concerning check processing. Most people assume that once a check "clears" it's confirmed as valid. That's not true.

There's much wider audience that is suffering from this vulnerability in the banking process. I am talking about eBay buyers and sellers.

Side thought - unless eBay is profiting from the uncertainty, they might want to lobby the remedy to this problem, because it is costing them zillions of potential users that are not currently using eBay for the fear of being scammed.

Another side thought is how much time will pass before there will be uproar about the conflict of interest between eBay and PayPal, for eBay does collect the fees regardless of whether the buyer or the seller thinks the whole transaction is fraudulent. You can see glimpses of it in Australia, where eBay tried to make PayPal the only available payment method.

Not to single eBay out, any payment mediator is in the same situation, not necessarily for this reason. Existing Internet retail practices allow for many unfavorable race conditions to exist that allow exploits.

Back to the original point - all these things happen because of absence of a strictly defined protocol that allows the end user, the consumer, to track what is happening, when and why. Such protocols are in place for every step of the way (it wouldn't be possible to conduct business otherwise), except the "last mile" to the actual consumer.

There's an interesting problem here - similar to the famous Zen koan: those who care, see the inadequacy. Those who don't see the inadequacy, don't care. As witnessed by another recent discussion on TechDirt, there are idiots out there, and no matter what safety guards will be installed, they will keep being scammed. They will either be unable to comprehend, or simply unaware, or careless.

But I want the protocol nevertheless.

Android G1: RIM should be afraid. Very afraid.

Here's what is going to happen pretty soon, in no particular order, with different probability of materialization:

• Software development houses are going to realize that Android offers them equal, if not more powerful platform than BlackBerry OS;
  
• They are going to realize that social networking and application interoperability (a.k.a. Web 2.0) is making their life much easier, and development overhead smaller, and time to market shorter;
• For a short while, corporations will bitch and moan about absence of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes support on Android;
• Software development houses are going to realize that whoever comes up with Microsoft Exchange and/or Lotus Notes support on Android is going to hit the jackpot;
• Hence, the Big Race will start (I believe it has already started), and Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes support will inevitably come to Android, and very soon;
• This will eliminate the competitive advantage that BlackBerry is still enjoying;
• RIM is going to realize that Android in general, and G1 in particular, is the BlackBerry killer;
  
• RIM may do the right thing and drop BlackBerry OS altogether, with just legacy support (unlikely, that's too much of loss of face) or
  
• RIM may do the right thing and release a BlackBerry device with Android instead of or along with BlackBerry OS, gradually fading BlackBerry OS into oblivion;
  
• Presence of Android on BlackBerry hardware is going to save their butt, and allow them to save billions of dollars on not having to develop something the rest of the world is already eager to do for them. Just let them.

So here's what I would do:

• If I was responsible for mobile application development for consumer sector: drop BlackBerry development, change iPhone/Android resource allocation as 20/80 - iPhone is just one iPhone, Android is a platform, a cheaper platform, with more phones to come and vastly wider distribution;
  
• If I was responsible for mobile application development for corporate sector: forget that Android is not currently on the approved list. This will change very fast. Change the BlackBerry/Android resource allocation to at least 50/50, and keep watching the market. Oh, and look very deeply into not reinventing the wheel, for application interoperability will be the key for Android applications, and there'll be lots of reusable code to reuse;
  
• If I was responsible for infrastructure development: location based services are somewhat overdue, make sure they're not forgotten - and start planning ahead already;
• If I was responsible for buying a phone for myself: I'd buy G1, in fact, I just did;
• If I was responsible for corporate procurement plan: I'd eliminate all sorts of long term contracts with RIM and kept talking to Google about how they can make my life easier.

Now the prediction's been made, let's sit and wait and see what happens. I don't think holding one's breath for extended periods of time is necessary - BoA's mobile banking application has already been available on day one, Visa has declared their intent to do the same, there's some action as far as Microsoft Exchange support is concerned, Motorola is working on something. Let's see how much time it takes for others to realize that either they have to jump on the bandwagon, or be left in the dust.

Update: Told ya: CompanionLink Releases Outlook Syncing App For Android. Less than a month. May not be perfect, but certainly proves the point. Now let's see how long does it take for Lotus Notes sync app to arrive.