Blippy is being tossed through the meat grinder today over a leak of several credit card numbers from users. The company lets people record and share their purchases with friends online.
A darling of the technology and investment worlds, Blippy signed up the tech elite overnight, and raised $11 million in short order. Today after the privacy breach, people are publicly writing the company off. They broke the trust that made the whole idea feasible, so the logic goes.
After reading what actually happened, I think that any level-headed observer can say this: if Blippy was a good idea a week ago, it still is today after the leak.
Blippy is being run by some of the smartest folks online, including everyone’s favorite Phillip “Pud” Kaplan, who has a special place in bloggers’ hearts for past written works. The company has solid investors, an interesting (some say innovative) product, and they (were) growing like a weed.
Is the accidental release of four credit card numbers due to a small Google caching error enough to stop that momentum? It is true that the rumor of poison is enough to stop drinking from the well. Given the level of noise that is being raised over the leak, yes, this could be a serious problem for the company’s future.
But for the above reasons we can trust that Blippy is going to do the following: publicly remunerate the people who had their information leaked, redouble security efforts, and make plain hopefully through a high-profile new hire that security is at the very core of the Blippy product.
While I find Blippy far to exposing to use, many people love it. We should not let a small glitch take that away. Blippy, do your part and show everyone how serious you are about data privacy and safety and we should be able to set this straight.
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