Over the past year of freelancing, I inherited two web projects, both of them built in PHP, both of them with sensitive information like credit card info, bank info, etc...

In one application, when I typed http://thecompany.com/admin/, and without being asked for a username and password, I saw every user's sensitive information, including credit card numbers, bank account numbers etc...

In another application, I was able to bypass the login screen by simply typing http://the2ndcompany.com/customer.php?user_id=777, and again, without any prompts for username and password, i was able to see user 777's credit card info. I cycled through a few more user_ids (any integer) and saw each person's credit card info.

Is something wrong here? Or is this the quality of work that the "average" programmer produces? Because if this is what the average programmer produces, does that means I'm an...gasp...elite programmer?? No..that can't be right....something doesn't make sense.

So my question is, is it just coincidence that I inherited two applications both of which are dangerously lacking in security? Or are there are a lot of bad PHP programmers out there?