Over at the Consumerist, there’s a recent piece debunking a Boston Globe article on writing “See ID” or some variation of the phrase on the back of credit cards. I admire what popular consumer advocacy site has done for the average person who’s gotten screwed by a large company, but some of their posts definitely suffer from the Gawker formula. In the effort to crank out content persistently every day, editors inject significant personal bias and non-news into the stream of articles.
Unfortunately, the Consumerist takes the anti-fraud prevention stance pretty significantly. Not that I’m advocating fraud: a large number of people write in who have experienced identity theft. As a result, the editors’ viewpoints trend towards “being safe than sorry” all the way up the ladder to blatant fearmongering. The latest contribution towards the fearmongering effort (which also contributes towards the page view effort) is to talk about the advantages of writing “See ID” beside your signature on the back of a credit card.
