By John Oates, 20 July 2000 18:20
NEWS Following the break of the Powergen scandal, in which debit card details were left unprotected on the Powergen web-server, Silicon readers reacted with shock at the way the utility handled the whole affair. The first of many emails we received on the scandal was from a reader who works in a call centre, which registers users of an online energy brokering system. He said: "I don't believe Powergen realise how much this incident has caused its customers to lose trust in them. I have been questioned several times about the Powergen incident. Customers have asked if Powergen are part of our service and if it's safe to use them and have even had requests from customers to exclude Powergen from our service." John Paschoud asked: "Have Powergen or their directors who were reported to have called in the police to bring the 'hackers' to justice, been charged with wasting police time yet?" Nick Tod, from Wiretech.co.uk, said: "I would hope Powergen have issued a formal apology not only to their customers whose details they exposed, but also to John Chamberlain and yourselves for accusing him of hacking the site and you of publicising his hacking. Such accusations could be libellous." Finally, Jason Sheldon from digital-solutions.co.uk pointed out the story illustrates a wider issue for the industry to address. He said: "I have been contacting world-wide companies in the last few weeks about security on sites and have had NO response from almost ALL of them. We have been asking permission to test their servers, for free, and not even had a 'Thanks, but no thanks' reply."
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