If you’ve found your way to this site, you’re probably savvy enough to know that it’s a very, very poor idea to snap cell phone pics of your debit card and post them to the public photo-sharing service Instagram. We would have thought that would be common sense for anyone intelligent enough to own both money and a functioning smartphone. We were wrong. You see, the NeedADebitCard Twitter bot retweets photos that people post publicly online of their credit and debit cards, often with the numbers in full view. It always seems to have fresh material, but those featured do often take their photos down. The rest remain, with names and numbers in full view.

“Please quit posting pictures of your debit cards, people,” is the feed’s Twitter profile and its simple plea. Offenders come from all over the world, but skew young. Young enough to just be obtaining their first debit cards, clearly.

There’s not a lot that criminals can do without the CVV card on the back, or the computer chip embedded in many foreign cards. But that doesn’t make posting images of your cards online is at all safe, or even close to being a good idea. Those who have breached themselves should probably get new cards. And not snap pictures of them, this time.

@Needadebitcard [Twitter] (via The Verge – thanks, Chris!)

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