On May 8, 2009, at 3:39 PM, Ian G wrote:
The difficulty with client certs is that I need them to also work
on my
laptop. And my other laptop. And my phone.
So, how do I get hold of them when I'm on the road?
Good point. The difficulty with my passwords is that I have so many
that are so long that I can only manage them on my laptop, and have
to carry my laptop with me ...
We can imagine all sorts of techie solutions to this, but it does
appear that we are in a bit of a grey zone with auth at the moment,
and the full solution might take a while to emerge. Try them all?
This is part of a broader UI issue.
I had a discussion with a guy at a company that was proposing to
create secure credit cards by embedding a chip in the card and
replacing some number of digits with an LCD display. The card would
generate a unique card number for you when needed. They actually had
the technology working - the card was pretty much indistinguishable
from any other. (Of course, how rugged it would be in typical
environments is another question - but they claimed they had a
solution.)
I pointed out that my wife knows one of her CC numbers by heart. The
regularly quotes it, both on phone calls and to web forms. The card
itself is buried in a thick wallet, which is buried in her pocketbook,
which is somewhere in the house - likely not near the phone or the
computer.
Hell, one of the nice things about on-line shopping is that I can do
it in my bathrobe - except that I *don't* know my CC by heart, so in
fact I tend to put off buying until later when I have my wallet with
me. (This does save me money....)
When I'm in a store, I'm used to having to have my CC with me, because
I always had to have the wallet with money anyway. At home, it's a
whole different story. In any case, merchants are trying to make the
in-store experience as simple as possible, pushing for things like
RFID credit cards and even fingerprint recognition.
So many people would see these "safer" cards as a big step backwards
in usability. Why would they want such a thing? The card companies
are trying to sell "safety", but in the US, where your liability is at
most $50 if your CC number is stolen (and where in practice it's $0),
the only cost you as an individual bear is the inconvenience of
replacing a card. Because replacements for security problems have
gotten so common, the CC companies have streamlined the process. It's
really no big deal. I've had CC numbers stolen a couple of times (by
means unknown); recently, two of my CC's were replaced by the
companies based on some information known only to them. In every
case, the process was very quick and painless. Hell, these days even
on-line continuing charges often update to the new number
automatically (though I've learned to keep track of those and check).
The person arguing for this claimed that CC companies could offer a
discount for users of the "secure" cards. But if you look at actual
loss rates - how much could you offer? (I'd guess it's about the same
as Discover offers: About a 1.5% rebate on most purchases. Not
enough to let Discover steal customers from Visa and MC. Given all
the other charges - and the absurdly high interest rates - on cards,
anything like this gets lost in the noise.)
Security that depends on people changing their habits in a way that is
inconvenient to them ... won't happen (unless you're in an environment
where you can *force* such changes).
-- Jerry
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