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> Not for small businesses, they're not. I don't know of a single small business that has ever been audited under PCI-DSS. And these are the ones that will keep

by bhupy 6y ago

> Not for small businesses, they're not. I don't know of a single small business that has ever been audited under PCI-DSS. And these are the ones that will keep your CVC code in the unencrypted spreadsheet on the unprotected laptop they use to track their customers' phone orders. I help run a small financial services business. We absolutely cannot touch card data (eg PAN) without being PCI DSS compliant. Very Good Security (VGS) exists precisely because of this, there is a market need for PCI-as-a-service. You can in theory ask someone to give you PAN-in-the-clear, but you wouldn't be able to grow a business large enough that one would be "unable to live without" you, per the writer of this article. If you are that kind of a service, you will absolutely face the consequences of not being PCI-DSS, and you have every incentive to just use a service like Stripe or Braintree to process your payments, where it's impossible to get that information in plaintext unless you're PCI-DSS compliant anyway. > And these are the ones that will keep your CVC code in the unencrypted spreadsheet on the unprotected laptop they use to track their customers' phone orders. The set of small businesses in the US that don't use Stripe, Square, Braintree, etc to run their payments is so minuscule as to be insignificant. These businesses absolutely do not have the ability to see your CVC code, it's all tokenized. > Do you realise that there are entire first world countries where credit cards are hardly used? That outside the US, direct payment/debit schemes are widespread? Take a look at one of the big multi-method payment services. They offer hundreds of different options for accepting payments from different places around the world. Yes? I'm not sure what your argument is here. Debit cards fall under PCI-DSS compliance. We're talking about payment cards, not just credit cards. > If I have someone's credit card in my hand, then right now I can walk into any shop in the area and buy up to £45 of goods without a question being asked. If I go online, even with just the details embossed on the card, I could buy way more from countless stores. With just a little more widely available personal information about the cardholder, I could buy even more still. First of all, this is false on its face because you would have to know their PIN. Second of all, the threat model of physical theft of a credit card is extremely narrow. And even there, it's easy to remotely disable a payment card once you know you've lost it. EMV is the industry standard because the actual threat model: replay attacks was identified and neutralized. > So because Google is in the US, I shouldn't be concerned that everyone holding an Android phone within sight or earshot of me is potentially sending data about me to Google, that everyone I ever send an email to might be sharing the contents of the message with Google, and so on? Sorry, but I simply don't agree. Just because these huge multinationals may be based outside of easy legal reach for me, that doesn't mean they don't pose a danger to me or almost 70 million of my fellow citizens here, or the same for any other country. It requires tinfoil-hat levels of paranoia to think that merely being within earshot of an Android phone renders you susceptible to surveillance. Unless Google has information on you, personally, it's extremely difficult to correlate background audio noise to you personally, and that would only be possible if you actually went and used Google's services. The only system that has been able to apply this level of indirect surveillance is the Chinese government, but that's because they have your information (by force), unlike Google which you can simply avoid using. And if you're this paranoid about indirect exposure to Google, you can send PGP encrypted e-mails, even to people that use G-mail. You have the tools!

Silhouette 6y ago
The set of small businesses in the US that don't use Stripe, Square, Braintree, etc to run their payments is so minuscule as to be insignificant. And once again, there is a world outside the US, and some of its customs will be different to those you are familiar with. I've had more than one small shop or food place I buy stuff from clearly demonstrate that after a previous phone order paid by card, they'd just written down all the details and still had them on file, including the CVC. I'm not sure what your argument is here. Debit cards fall under PCI-DSS compliance. We're talking about payment cards, not just credit cards. Just for perspective, a rough calculation suggests that less than 25% of the money I have spent in the past 5 years was paid by card, whether credit or debit. The majority of the payments I make by far are via the UK bank faster payments system, standing orders, Direct Debit, etc. I don't think this is particularly unusual in the UK, or a lot of other places that have similar methods available. First of all, this is false on its face because you would have to know their PIN. And yet again, there is life outside the US, and the rest of the world doesn't necessarily work the same way you do. For example, you might like to look up contactless payments, which have been ubiquitous in places like the UK for many years. Second of all, the threat model of physical theft of a credit card is extremely narrow. And what about the person who had an opportunity to handle your card for a few seconds and record the numbers? What about the problems inherent in those contactless payments I mentioned, where someone can literally walk past you in the street and use a device to scan your card details if they pass close to you? What about the online businesses using the modern card payment services, but whose sites get hacked (or just cloned on a similar-looking domain) so that at the payment form/script stage it's not really Stripe or PayPal you're giving your card details to? Apparently your threat model is excluding quite a lot of the potential threats. It requires tinfoil-hat levels of paranoia to think that merely being within earshot of an Android phone renders you susceptible to surveillance. Unless Google has information on you, personally, it's extremely difficult to correlate background audio noise to you personally, and that would only be possible if you actually went and used Google's services. No, it isn't. Voiceprints are a unique biometric marker, and the technology to isolate individual voices in a recording with a high degree of accuracy has existed for a long time. You're potentially subject to surveillance any time you're within audible range of a device that monitors for trigger words (typically with considerably less than 100% accuracy) and then uploads the following audio to the mothership. Or just because someone had an app that accessed the microphone, covertly or otherwise, and then uploaded the audio for whatever reason; take your pick. Directly analogous arguments, other than the voice activation triggers, apply to photos taken on phones and subsequently uploaded to cloud storage or shared on social media as well. And if you're this paranoid about indirect exposure to Google, you can send PGP encrypted e-mails, even to people that use G-mail. You have the tools! Unfortunately, the person I'm sending to usually won't, and I have no way to determine whether they are using Google to handle their email anyway.

by bhupy 6y ago

Silhouette 6y ago

The set of small businesses in the US that don't use Stripe, Square, Braintree, etc to run their payments is so minuscule as to be insignificant. And once again, there is a world outside the US, and some of its customs will be different to those you are familiar with. I've had more than one small shop or food place I buy stuff from clearly demonstrate that after a previous phone order paid by card, they'd just written down all the details and still had them on file, including the CVC. I'm not sure what your argument is here. Debit cards fall under PCI-DSS compliance. We're talking about payment cards, not just credit cards. Just for perspective, a rough calculation suggests that less than 25% of the money I have spent in the past 5 years was paid by card, whether credit or debit. The majority of the payments I make by far are via the UK bank faster payments system, standing orders, Direct Debit, etc. I don't think this is particularly unusual in the UK, or a lot of other places that have similar methods available. First of all, this is false on its face because you would have to know their PIN. And yet again, there is life outside the US, and the rest of the world doesn't necessarily work the same way you do. For example, you might like to look up contactless payments, which have been ubiquitous in places like the UK for many years. Second of all, the threat model of physical theft of a credit card is extremely narrow. And what about the person who had an opportunity to handle your card for a few seconds and record the numbers? What about the problems inherent in those contactless payments I mentioned, where someone can literally walk past you in the street and use a device to scan your card details if they pass close to you? What about the online businesses using the modern card payment services, but whose sites get hacked (or just cloned on a similar-looking domain) so that at the payment form/script stage it's not really Stripe or PayPal you're giving your card details to? Apparently your threat model is excluding quite a lot of the potential threats. It requires tinfoil-hat levels of paranoia to think that merely being within earshot of an Android phone renders you susceptible to surveillance. Unless Google has information on you, personally, it's extremely difficult to correlate background audio noise to you personally, and that would only be possible if you actually went and used Google's services. No, it isn't. Voiceprints are a unique biometric marker, and the technology to isolate individual voices in a recording with a high degree of accuracy has existed for a long time. You're potentially subject to surveillance any time you're within audible range of a device that monitors for trigger words (typically with considerably less than 100% accuracy) and then uploads the following audio to the mothership. Or just because someone had an app that accessed the microphone, covertly or otherwise, and then uploaded the audio for whatever reason; take your pick. Directly analogous arguments, other than the voice activation triggers, apply to photos taken on phones and subsequently uploaded to cloud storage or shared on social media as well. And if you're this paranoid about indirect exposure to Google, you can send PGP encrypted e-mails, even to people that use G-mail. You have the tools! Unfortunately, the person I'm sending to usually won't, and I have no way to determine whether they are using Google to handle their email anyway.