Digital Lifestyles

Chip & PIN

in ,
In 2005 (barely a fortnight away - eek!) all UK banks are moving credit and debit cards to a Chip & PIN system which relies upon card owners keying in their secret four digit PIN number at every retail outlet or store in the land, placing the onus for security upon the customer's retention (and protection) of their secret PIN number - and the store's security systems - rather than replying upon visually matching handwritten signatures.

When I first heard about this I was immediately wary of the prospect of repeatedly keying my PIN number into barely obscured keypads at busy shop checkouts which, in my opinion, considerably heightens the chances of someone standing nearby (probably unshaven and wearing a black and white striped top) actually seeing your simple number, following you outside and bonking you on the head outside the store, pinching your card whilst little birds fly circles around your head, and duly emptying your bank account at the conveniently placed cash machine situated outside most superstores these days.

I heard over the weekend that a renowned security systems expert has now come out to say that Chip and PIN is fundamentally flawed for precisely this reason.
"Serious doubts about the safety of new chip and pin cards were raised yesterday when a leading security expert said they were "fundamentally flawed".

Prof Ross Anderson, an authority on security engineering at Cambridge University, said he was so worried about the system, which was designed to combat fraud, that he refused to use it at supermarkets.

A warning was also issued by the National Consumer Council. It said that chip and pin could leave shoppers vulnerable to pickpockets and cash machine theft.

A card owner may type his or her pin four or five times during a day's shopping, giving snoopers plenty of opportunity to memorise the number, steal the card and head for a cash machine." Daily Telegraph 18th Dec
Doh! Like, they just worked that out!

I think the whole venture is secretly being sponsorsed by online retailers in a bid to switch people off high street shopping altogether.

Perhaps we'll soon see scare stories emerging about how insecure offline shopping is compared with online, quite a contrast from a couple of years ago.

Although

in
...strictly speaking, I purloined the PowerBook for my dear Mrs T, I have been having a play about with it. Hard to resist.

But the test of my logic of getting it in the first place proved right as while I was away from home for 3 days during the week, Fiona was able to show her mother a load of digitial photos using iPhoto which is pretty easy to wrangle.

I also replaced my Linksys WiFi access point with a combo ADSL WiFi router single box job which means permanent wireless web connection without having to fire up my Windows XP box to share it out. That's a big difference.

Simply opening the PowerBook up means instant web access for surfing, email or whatever. Absolutely zero faff.

It lives in the kitchen - the busiest traffic room of our house - and so far I'm quite pleased with both it and my digital lifestyle strategy.

I have about 5,000+ digital photos which even if I'd printed every one of them, would be many too many to deal with / store / review physically. I breifly contended with buying a compact dye-sub printer but all routes led to engaging with my Windows XP box which is quite a scary place (plus it's only usable in the spare room). Enter the PowerBook as a great solution to that problem.