Can New York Times cause Identity Thefts ?

Vishal Mishra writes: "This is regarding a recent and very well written New York Times story on SlashDot, about Identity Thefts. While the story provides a lot of useful information, it also directs users to a search site developed by a company TrustedID, that can help people know if they have already been a victim of identity fraud. This site can potentially steal social security numbers by the way it collects SSN for verification against its database. The site does not use hashing at all, but instead requires customers to send SSN or credit card information unhashed. Here is a link to the blog describing the attack and the right secured way to build such search sites — http://vmtech.blogspot.com"