Why Blockbuster looks at your ID.

Lance James lancej at securescience.net
Sun Jul 10 14:29:52 EDT 2005


Adam Shostack wrote:

>On Sun, Jul 10, 2005 at 12:13:42AM +0100, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
>| Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>|  
>| > A system in which the credit card was replaced by a small, calculator
>| > style token with a smartcard style connector could effectively
>| > eliminate most of the in person and over the net fraud we experience,
>| > and thus get rid of large costs in the system and get rid of the need
>| > for every Tom, Dick and Harry to see your drivers license when you
>| > make a purchase. It would both improve personal privacy and help the
>| > economy by massively reducing transaction costs.
>| 
>| I agree that it might well reduce costs and fraud - but how will it improve
>| privacy? Your name is already on the card ... and the issuer will still have
>| a list of your transactions.
>| 
>| Not having to show ID may save annoyance, but it doesn't significantly
>| improve privacy.
>
>Most credit card issuers will happily give you extra cards, so your
>friends can spend your money.  In whatever name you want.  If you need
>to show ID, this can become, umm, complicated.
  

This goes along with paypal's "send a friend a debit card" feature (I 
saw this two years ago, I don't know if this is still present), but this 
essentially allowed a user to add any name to the debit visa card 
(treated in most places like a credit card) which in some cases actually 
allowed online hijacking of domain names (depending on registrar) 
because the name was the same on the visa card used.


-Lance


-- 
Best Regards,
Lance James
Secure Science Corporation
www.securescience.net
Author of 'Phishing Exposed'
http://www.securescience.net/amazon/
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