November 29th, 2004
Listings for sex and drugs appear on Target.com
Marijuana is making headlines again. While the front page of CNN’s web site carried a story about the Supreme Court’s attention to the issue of marijuana for medicinal purposes, Target (the superstore) appears to already have marijuana for sale (and just in time for the holidays). According to a page on Target’s site, an undisclosed amount of marijuana can be purchased for $25.25. Free shipping is apparently available for orders of $30 or more. The listing appears as a part of Target’s Entertainment category and offers on-line shoppers a link to related items in the category of "substance abuse." Listings also appear for "Crack" (on sale for 10 percent off) and "Hooker" (for a conspicuously priced $69.99).
By the time you read this, my guess is that Target will have deactivated the links or will have the pages corrected. According to the marijuana listing’s shipping information, the "product’s" dimensions are 9.56 inches x 6.72 inches width x .4 inches height – roughly the shape of a book, or of the packaging materials used for CDs or DVDs. Target sells hundreds of books, CDs, and DVDs with the word "marijuana" in their titles. One of these is a book that Target offers for $25.25 as well. In other words, it’s not clear how that or the other listings came to be (a call has been placed to Target’s media relations department).
These could be erroneously displayed records or, Target’s systems may have been hacked. The $69.99 price certainly suggests that it’s a case of hacking. If it is a hack, then, regardless of whether it is an inside job, or an outside one, it does raise concerns about how far such hackers would go. For example, what would prevent such a hacker from loading infectious content onto a site that is otherwise thought to be safe for browsing with Internet Explorer?
