4 ms·

Verifone has a point, but it comes through very badly in what they wrote. It's all about the issue of trust and habit. Skimming equipment, both software and ha

Verifone has a point, but it comes through very badly in what they wrote. It's all about the issue of trust and habit. Skimming equipment, both software and hardware, has been freely available for ages now. And it's quite simple. Anybody who knows how to use ebay and write a small application can create quite sophisticated skimming equipment themselves. The problem is not the availability of the equipment or the know-how. The problem is what "average Joe" is used to. If "average Joe" would balk when presented an off the shelf mobile phone to swipe their card through, well, then skimming using a mobile phone would be hard. But if the banks and payment processors have trained "average Joe" to know that a mobile phone is a completely legit way of reading credit cards, well then this type of skimming is easy. If no ATMs existed, well, then it would be really hard to skim cards using an ATM-like device, because people would balk. It's all about keeping the different legit ways of accepting credit card payment to a minimum. The fewer legit ways, the fewer possibilities of skimming. On the other hand, there is no doubt in my mind that mobile payment will be the future. Replacing the standard plastic will a chip in your mobile phone will become commonplace soon, and we will also probably see applications where you can transfer money to others simply by having both mobile phones interact. So the question is if the big fuss really helps anyone, or if it's only delaying the inevitable.

bradleyland 16y ago
Giving any credibility to that argument is entirely fallacious because it fails the infinite regression test. Ultimately, you end up back at the argument that if we all relied on cash, there would be no credit/debit card information to steal at all. Making it difficult to process credit cards doesn't solve the problem of credit card security.
- deadcyclo 16y ago
  Not talking about making it difficult to process credit cards, but rather standardizing it as much as possible. I will again use the ATM as an example. If all ATMs looked exactly the same anybody should be able to detect fake ATMs and ATMs sabbotaged with external skimming equipment. Security wise an inexpensive portable standardised terminal would make much more sense. In the end it would cost a bit more, but this would not necessarilly translate to increased cost for the POS. Less skimming equals less cost to the service providers _and_ the POS.

bradleyland 16y ago

Giving any credibility to that argument is entirely fallacious because it fails the infinite regression test. Ultimately, you end up back at the argument that if we all relied on cash, there would be no credit/debit card information to steal at all. Making it difficult to process credit cards doesn't solve the problem of credit card security.

deadcyclo 16y ago
Not talking about making it difficult to process credit cards, but rather standardizing it as much as possible. I will again use the ATM as an example. If all ATMs looked exactly the same anybody should be able to detect fake ATMs and ATMs sabbotaged with external skimming equipment. Security wise an inexpensive portable standardised terminal would make much more sense. In the end it would cost a bit more, but this would not necessarilly translate to increased cost for the POS. Less skimming equals less cost to the service providers _and_ the POS.