Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Chip and PIN - technology and trust
Following on from Peter's comments, the chip and PIN is a great idea - if we can trust machines. With signatures, someone has to sign the card, and the merchant is at risk of being defrauded by the customer, and the legitimate cardholder by the person who's pinched their card.
The PIN will solve all this, the card companies cry. But now we have to trust the mobile card reader - after all, it gets both our card information from the magnetic strip and the PIN number we key in. So now there's the risk of fraud on a massive scale, aided by that little reader. Are you sure it's not storing your details?
Following on from Peter's comments, the chip and PIN is a great idea - if we can trust machines. With signatures, someone has to sign the card, and the merchant is at risk of being defrauded by the customer, and the legitimate cardholder by the person who's pinched their card.
The PIN will solve all this, the card companies cry. But now we have to trust the mobile card reader - after all, it gets both our card information from the magnetic strip and the PIN number we key in. So now there's the risk of fraud on a massive scale, aided by that little reader. Are you sure it's not storing your details?
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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