We had a customer with the last name "Echo" who couldn't make a credit card payment. Turns out that the card processor was looking for strings which were common Unix commands and not allowing them.
Security procedures for vendors hosting websites for Members of Congress apparently require them to look for sql injection attacks and redirect to 404 if they think one was found. The result appears to be that many just keep a list of keywords and characters and fail if found. Is your first name "Walter"? Oh, you tried to run the "alter" command in your message to your Congressman... we will take you to a 404 page. Oh you used semi-colons and single quotes in your message? ...hacker alert! off to blank page with you. Completely inconsistent between vendors/forms of course.
The system that prints our shipment labels stripped "var" from customer and street names. Sorry Halvar, you're now known as Hal. Customer names wheren't so bad, the mail service got the right people anyway, but reducing streetnames like "Vardegade" to "degade" is a bit more troublesome.
They never told me what the bug was, only that they fixed it. I have some idea though.
God, what a terrible idea. That would exclude Man Ray, Sir Thomas More, Murray Head, Tex Avery, Kimiko Date, Rollie Fingers, James Last, and even Steve Jobs!
