Where does survive the inventive user ?

[Richard Gaskin]

Kay C Lan wrote:

> I look in my wallet an there are a couple of notes and a couple of plastic
> cards. The notes represent about 0.01% of iMoney I have in my account. I can
> use those plastic cards to access the BankCloud and if the strangers at the
> Bank are willing, the machine will give me more real money on a 1 to 1
> reduction of my iMoney. Sometimes I don't even have to change iMoney into
> real money, I just go to the shop and transfer iMoney from my account to
> their iMoney account which all resides in the same BankCloud. Of course I
> have to pay a 'rental' fee for the privilege of being able to access my
> iMoney at virtually any time or shop. But then again, if a stranger at the
> bank goes all Nick Leeson on me, the bank will collapse and my iMoney in the
> BankCloud will disappear like the early morning stratocumulus, leaving me
> without any real money.
>
> Strange what we think we'd never do.

Or even stranger, we could trust our money to so-called professional 
money managers who mishandle it so badly that the world economy is 
brought to the edge of collapse. ;)

For all of our concerns about online security, one of the most common 
methods is still the most old-school:

Every day millions of us go to restaurants where we hand our credit card 
to a stranger who takes it out of the room for several minutes. 
Ostensibly they're merely processing the transaction, but of course we 
have no way to know exactly what happens while the card is out of the room.

I do a lot of online banking, but the only instance of identity theft 
I've experienced was from numbers stolen off a card I only use in the 
physical world.

Further irony:  most old-school modems used at restaurants and retail 
stores transmit without encryption over standard phone lines.  While 
those lines aren't exposed to the Internet, they are vulnerable to any 
physical interception of traffic, such as tapping the local trunk.

And here in the States we have a growing problem with fake or modified 
ATMs that skim card data.

Remember:  just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to 
get you. :)

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv