The Universal Card

retro128 writes "Wired News is carrying a story about a new product from Chameleon Network that's supposed to replace all of your credit/debit/customer cards. It can read the information off of the magnetic strips of credit/debit cards, scan the barcode off of customer loyalty cards, and even memorize the RFID signals of devices like the Mobil SpeedPass. All of this information is stored in a device called the Pocket Vault, and is unlocked with the user's fingerprint. If you wish to use a magnetic strip card, you select the card from the touch screen and put a Chameleon card, which looks like and can be run in standard readers like a credit card, in the Pocket Vault. The Chameleon card will then assume the identity of the card you selected, but only for 10 minutes. In this way, if the card is lost or stolen, nobody can use it. In the case of RFID, you just hold the Pocket Vault up to the RFID scanner for a reading. For barcode-based cards, the barcode will appear on the screen and can be scanned by a standard barcode reader. Chameleon Network says this technology will be available in early 2005 and is expected to cost under $200."

Yes but what about bluetooth?

Seriously, seems cumbersome and delicate. Can I sit on one of these? You don't want me sitting on your lap (for various reasons) but my credit cards can handle it.

Re:Yes but what about bluetooth?

I contacted them with some questions. Here is their replies:

*****

Dear Malachi,

Three-digit credit card security codes will appear on the Pocket Vault screen when you press the "card details" icon. For any card that is currently "issued" or active on the Chameleon Card, the Pocket Vault will then display the security pin and available credit and card balance at the last time the device was updated.

Todd O. Burger
President & CEO
Chameleon Network Inc.
30 Monument Square, Suite 300
Concord, MA 01742
[e-mail]

W [phone]
F [phone]
H [phone]
M [phone]

*****

Dear Malachi,

Credit and debit cards can only be loaded to a person's Pocket Vault while the Pocket Vault is docked to a PC or Mac and the legitimate owner of the Pocket Vault has established a secure Internet session.
(The computer and the Pocket Vault actually establish dual secure sessions in parallel on a standard dial-up or better Internet connection with the Pocket Vault website or the website of an authorized Pocket Vault dealer (for example, a major credit card issuing bank). The security and simplicity of our loading process are two of the elements that impressed card industry executives. The complexity is not visible to the consumer and the number of steps the consumer actually takes are few.

The Chameleon Card does have a conventional signature block on its back. Most security experts would acknowledge that the usefulness of the signature is no better than the skill of the average retail clerk who must perform on the spot handwriting analysis by "confirming" that the signature on the card matches the signature on the receipt or the signature entered on the pad at the cash register. Despite the limited value of such verification, we do not alter this verification element. Of course, we think the other security elements that essentially verify that you are the legitimate owner and user of the Pocket Vault represent the real substantive security, and that retailers will eventually come to a similar conclusion, tending to ignore the signature block on Chameleon Cards.

There are two types of places that take imprints: Those that do it as another security tool on top of magnetic-swipe capture of the account number, and those that are completely off-line (e.g., a taxi or flea market merchant.) Those that do it for additional security will no longer need to do this with chameleon Cards. For truly off-line merchants, (about 2% of total credit card transactions or less), the merchant will record the card number by looking at the screen of the Pocket Vault and writing this by hand on the slip. Since worn cards often leave illegible imprints that require the retailer to re-write the number anyway, there is not a great deal of difference here.

The Pocket Vault can store a license type photo (and family and pet photos as well) and associate that photo with any photo ID. The photo displays on the Pocket Vault screen while a photo ID type card is issued.

Please feel free to post this information. You are one of many that has asked such questions, and we are unable to answer all of them. We hope the flood of orders we are seeing (and hope to continue to see) convince card industry executives that we have something here of broad interest to consumers, which could accelerate our efforts.

Thank you for your interest in our product and services.

Todd O. Burger
President & CEO
Chameleon Network Inc.
30 Monument Square, Suite 300
Concord, MA 01742
[e-mail]

W [phone]
F [phone]
H [phone]

Re:Yes but what about bluetooth?

all your cards are belong to us?

Yeah, that's the obvious problem. Who's to say that the information in the card database is for your credit card? Couldn't it be anyone's credit card?

Credit card companies have taken steps to link the physical card to the bearer - putting your photo on the credit card, printing on the card that merchants should request ID confirmation, etc. This completely sidesteps those mechanisms.

In short,this is the perfect tool for credit card theft. Work at a diner for a month, and scan every customer's credit card into your Chameleon. You can then take a great free vacation to another state and pay for every expense on a different credit card.

It took me about 14 seconds to realize this. And yet, some company spent $beeleeons developing it - probably relying on the old "we can paper over the problem with marketing hype" tactic/fallacy. Any chance the Chameleon is made by Diebold?

- David Stein

Re:Yes but what about bluetooth?

One obvious solution (which admittedly isn't mentioned in the article, and thus shouldn't be assumed to be true) is that the device could/may refuse to hold cards for more than one name.

The average person (i.e. almost everyone) has precisely zero reason to carry someone else's credit card (and if they had them, many stores wouldn't accept one that wasn't yours since they're not supposed to do so). This device may simply make the valid assumption that all of your cards should have the same name (which is stored magnetically in the card, if I'm not mistaken).

This would, at least, prevent stealing more than one person's card.

Small Problem

"John Q. Public"

"Jonnie Public"

"Johnathan Public"

"J. Q. Public"

"Johnathan Quincy Public"

Re:Small Problem

Don't forget his new wife: Jane Marie Average-Public, who is still trying to get her Social Security Card re-issued with her married name. Double the fun if she answers to her middle name, triple if people routinely mispell any part of her name (Jayne Mary?)

Re:Yes but what about bluetooth?

One obvious solution (which admittedly isn't mentioned in the article, and thus shouldn't be assumed to be true) is that the device could/may refuse to hold cards for more than one name.

But everyone has to trust the device to enforce that restriction. A hack for this device, or a copycat device, would exploit that trust quite easily.

- David Stein

You want me to pay for that?

200 bucks for you to know everything about me?

How about YOU pay ME.

Re:You want me to pay for that?

RTFA - It stores all of the information locally. The only one that knows everything about you is you.

Seriously.

That's $200 you're whipping out in front of everyone. So easy to lose, and so tempting to steal (even if they can't get the data in it).

Here's what would make more sense: All credit/debit cards require the reader to verify and register the purchase. Instead you open up a meta-account with a debit card that you register ALL your cards and bank accounts with, and then use just that card, allowing the meta-account to distribute your money for maximum savings or returns. Since interest is compounded daily, paying/investing daily could save/make you a fair chunk of change. Hell, just make it a free government service and make it your driver's license or id, so you don't have to carry anything extra.

Oh, and if you lose it you're not out $200.

Re:Seriously.

The Benefit of this thing is essentially that, lacking your fingerprint(the value of biometrics can be discussed elsewhere), it cannot be used

But that's the complete opposite of the truth. It needs the fingerprint of whoever owns the vault, not whoever owns the original credit card. This scheme simply means that if I DO get access to your credit card briefly that I may also have a cheap consumer device, that I don't need to be coy about using, that allows me to easily copy your card. Instead of walking round with a pocket full of stolen cards I have a single vault that nobody else can access.

Any "security" features of the original card are rendered irrelevant because of course I do have a completely valid chameleon card.

Signature confirmation goes completely out because either there is no signature on the chameleon card or, again, it's the signature of whoever owns the chameleon card not whoever owns the original.

To try to spin this as giving added security to owners of genuine cards is absurd.

Re:Seriously.

But that's the complete opposite of the truth. It needs the fingerprint of whoever owns the vault, not whoever owns the original credit card.

This is the real problem. These guys sound like they have done a great job of protecting the consumer. In the process they have completely ignored the fact that they have created a method of forging credit cards that requires no expertise or special tools.

I think it will not be very long before the card associations tell their merchants that they must not accept these cards.

Free?

Hell, just make it a free government service

Free? Free to who? There are no such thing as "free" government services. They cost tax $. My tax $. Maybe I don't want to pay for your personal convenience. Maybe the guy next door doesn't care to pay for it either.

My vote: the current system

This just seems too complicated. I enjoy the simplicity of looking in my wallet, and having only a glance of the card I want, pull it out and use it, no need to select any menus or buttons on it, just pull it out, insert, replace.

Warning: Vaporware Company Detected

Any company that has a hyperlink marked "Investor Information" above-the-fold (shown without a need to scroll down on a typical 800x600 setup) is automatically a bit suspect.

I fear that Slashdot's logo is now going to get added to their brag-about-press-coverage page [chameleonnetwork.com]. For the record, the "Boston's WB in the Morning" program they brag about was canceled in 2002.

I'm not suggesting that this company's technology doesn't exist, but their product is pure vaporware [chameleonnetwork.com] and they have lists of good reasons why a merchant, bank, or large company should partner with them, but they can't name any merchant, bank, or large companies who have agreed to partner with them. At least they have a patent appilcation pending [chameleonnetwork.com].

Re:Warning: Vaporware Company Detected

...it will not be implemented because it would be far to easy to use the little bugger as a swipe-and-steal device. Even if the things were ever actually manufactured and sold, I imagine 99.99999% of vendors would not honor them. I sure as hell wouldn't. Besides, they've been circulating this idea for YEARS and they have yet to get beyond the gee-whiz idea stage.

Great idea....for thieves!

So I can grab any card I get my hands on for even a second (as a waiter or working at a gas station for example), run it through this toy and it saves the mag strip info to its internal memory. After getting several hundred (or when I max out the devices memory) I and my friends can then go on a HUGE shopping spree using stolen credit cards. Conveniently, as soon as I think the credit card companies might realize the first number is being used by an unauthorized person, I just switch to the next one. Sign me up! *sigh*

OMG you are a genious.

This is without a doubt the best thieves's tool!

The only thing that could be done to prevent this is to make it hold only a small number of each type of card. Like only 10 Credit Cards. Still, its pretty much simplyfies the "printing" of stolen cards.

OTOH, i wonder if this will ever work. CC companies must back this up to work, i mean try taking the mag strip off your AmEx (or visa, or ... ) card, and pasting it on a cardboard card, and write your name and number up on the front. And then TRY to use it in any shop. I am sure they'll just ask for some other card.

Re:OMG you are a genious.

Having to post anonymously, due to a previous life of crime that my present life must not acknowledge.

The criminal element factor was my first reaction to this. Back in the day, I worked as a bartender in a restaurant. I also knew a few people who were 'connected', as it were. These nefarious people had access to a magnetic card writer. I had access to a great many credit cards. I'm sure you can make the connection.

I was paid a non-trivial sum for every credit card number I delivered to them, and more for American Express Platinum cards. I was also paid another amount for pilfering credit cards from the office safe -- you'd be surprised how many people leave their cards behind at a bar and never reclaim them. We would always get at least 5-10 a night, and there was a stack of 100's that people had never claimed.

These people would then re-encode the pilfered cards with the stolen numbers and go on a spending spree. In the event of a store with a last four numbers check, or if security was a concern, they just used another corrupt employee like me to type in the correct four digits. I even recieved a few of these cards as bonus payments myself.

Luckily for me, I got out of the business before it attracted too much attention on my part. However, to this day, I will not use a debit card in place of a credit card. At least with a credit card, you have protection. A debt card just comes right out of your bank account. I certainly tried to not give the criminals debt card numbers, but I'm sure a few slipped through the cracks, and I know that there were co-workers less scrupulous than me.

However, I also wonder if you'd be able to use this device in any store. With all the security in place today, I wonder who would accept this as a valid credit card. I can't even buy things without having the back signed half the time. Then again, it's not like the self-checkout lines at Wal-Mart ever physically inspect my card.

and even memorize RFID signals of SpeedPass

and even memorize the RFID signals of devices like the Mobil SpeedPass.

Hey, slick, it can memorize a SpeedPass code. Gee, what could posiably go wrong with this?

Now we gotta wrap our speed pass in tin foil too!

Re:Did you read the parent post?

Not only that ... the stolen card database would be encrypted and protected by his own fingerprint should he ever be caught.

Making him decode the cards would be akin to making him testify against himself, hence making it unadmissible in court.

Plus he could always claim (farfetched, yes, but possible) that it was all some kind of equipment glitch or Chamaleon card mixup in a bar or something along these lines

Re:Did you read the parent post?

Making him decode the cards has nothing to do with him testifying against himself. If a judge sees probable cause to believe there is evidence stored on the device, he can issue a search warrant requiring the criminal to give access to the device. Its just like taking a breathalyzer or getting a blood test to determine if you have been drinking and driving, you aren't testifying against yourself, but rather being compelled to assist in providing evidence, even if the evidence is being used against you.

potentially inconvenient

This sounded cool to me for a few seconds until I thought, what happens when the cashier at the quick-n-go tries to verify your credit card against your license? Stephen

Gimmie your wallet!

and your thumb!

A card is more than just a magnetic strip...

It's not quite clear if Visa or Mastercard will allow its member stores to accept Chameleon Cards in place of real plastic cards. Afterall, that card won't be able to mimic the Visa or MS holigram, the color-printed signature strip with code number on it, or the physical impression of the card numbers.

Accepting non-original cards opens up the risk of accepting any card with a magnetic stripe as being a stand-in for the real credit card. It would effectively turn all in-person credit card transaction to being as insecure as a web transaction. There's a reason why web merchants have to pay more for their credit card services, and it's that insecurity.

So, it's near certian that Visa and Mastercard accepting stores will be ordered by the card networks not to accept Chameleon Cards from customers. Game over for this technology... it works in the lab but won't work in the real world.

Re:A card is more than just a magnetic strip...

If the machine doesn't prompt for the attendant to veryify the physical presense of the orignal card, then the card transaction slips from a card-present transaction to a card-not-present transaction, and a higher fee is due to the credit card issuers or the store has to eat the higher risk of fraud.

A debit card transaction can get by with just the pin and no physical verification... but that also means an even higher merchant fee. This is why Wal-Mart is no longer accepting MasterCard debit cards as debit cards when the card is capable of supporting a credit card transaction, because that's what's cheaper for the store to do.

Re:A card is more than just a magnetic strip...

That's not about the fee, that's for two other reasons:

1: Stores get the money credited for debit transactions immediately. They have to wait for credit card payments. That float is meaningful.
2: A credit card transaction is a lot easier to reverse... simply complain to the credit card company. Even if the complaint is invalid, the store's payment for the transaction is held in escrow until that is declared. (Reversed-by-complaint credit card transactions also carry steep penalty fees on the merchant side... the card issuing bank has to eat all fraudulently presented card cases.)

So, for $3 transactions, the debit card is better than the credit card mode because the store is just willing to eat the loss if the transaction goes fraudulent. For $300 transactions, not so much. Trust me, there's a dollar value somewhere at which point the default behavior will spin around... and you as a consumer never will want to use a debit card so long as you have a credit card in your wallet somewhere that can take the hit without incuring intrest.

Re:A card is more than just a magnetic strip...

I am always _very_ surprised to hear, you american people, describe their credit card system.

It sounds like middle-age era to the europeans.

For more than ten years now, we have anbandonned the use of the magnetic tape (not to speak of imprinting...).

Every credit card is equipped with a chip, is protected by a password (a four-digit code) that has to be typed on the card-reader for _anything_ you buy. And if the price is higher than some limit (say $100), the system contacts your bank.
No signature is ever used.
If you want to steal a card, you have to ask for the code (still better than to be asked for your thumb, btw).

It is difficult to copy a card. You cannot simply read it and make a copy. There have been some breach in the past, they have been somewhat fixed afterwards. They have remained small in their extend, and the bank had to cover any subsequent loss themselves (by law). It would be possible to do something even better, but apparently, the costs of upgrading the system are higher than those induced by fraud.

I guess it is the same issue that makes you keep your aging system.

completely compatible?

what if you want to imprint the card?

or verify a signature?
not too good..

Big Ouch at the ATM

One has to wonder... what happens if the ATM eats your card? Then again, if the ATM is likely to eat your card, you probably don't have the cash for this gadget anyways.

give up one digit or four?

and is unlocked with the user's fingerprint

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have it use a password. I think most people would happily give a sufficiently threatening criminal their 4 digit PIN number (or any style of password) without too much of a fuss, but I'd rather avoid giving anyone any incentive whatsoever to leave me short one digit. It would be a very small consolation to cancel my credit cards after such an incident.

Been done (errr, thought of)

That's right, this is the card that Ford Prefect swipes from his new Editor so he can hack into the basement computers with the help of his pet robot and....

This just in, new tool for ID Theft just released!

To me this just screams Identity theft. All a clerk has to do is have one of these in their pockets and swipe customer's cards to get a copy of it. No more need to cash it out on the spot (as with carrying around a second whole credit card scanner), they can use it anywhere they want, and have it report their name on the peice of plastic. And by capturing rfid tags? Doesnt that beat the "security" Speedpass and others like it are supposed to have built in? This thing doesnt seem to check whos card its scanning in, just asks for a finger print. This is essentially a credit-card coppier thats pocket sized. Sure its a little secure against itself being stolen and used by ID theifs, but what about ID thiefs using it against other consumers?

Tm

Stacks of Credit Cards?

I don't know about other folks, but I've got 3 credit cards, a NYC Metro Card(transit fares), an Employee IS and a drivers license in my wallet.

I wouldn't call that a stack and it's manageable. Never even though of this as being a problem before reading the article.

If someone were to use this gadget, they'd have the 'stack' of cards, AND the gadget to worry about. Right?

Sounds like a waste to me.... Nothing to see here, move along please.

wbs.

The Ident-i-Eeze!!

It wasn't insanely exciting to look at. It was rather dull in fact. It was smaller and a little thicker than a credit card and semi-transparent. If you held it up to the light you could see a lot of holographically encoded information and images buried pseudo-inches deep beneath its surface.

It was an Ident-i-Eeze, and was a very naughty and silly thing for Harl to have lying around in his wallet, though it was perfectly understandable. There were so many different ways in which you were required to provide absolute proof of your identity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an epistemologically ambiguous physical universe. Just look at cash point machines, for instance. Queues of people standing around waiting to have their fingerprints read, their retinas scanned, bits of skin scraped from the nape of the neck and undergoing instant (or nearly instant-a good six or seven seconds in tedious reality) genetic analysis, then having to answer trick questions about members of their family they didn't even remember they had, and about their recorded preferences for tablecloth colours. And that was just to get a bit of spare cash for the weekend. If you were trying to raise a loan for a jetcar, sign a missile treaty or pay an entire restaurant bill things could get really trying.

Hence the Ident-i-Eeze. This encoded every single piece of information about you, your body and your life into one all-purpose machine-readable card that you could then carry around in your wallet, and therefore represented technology's greatest triumph to date over both itself and plain common sense.

Ford pocketed it.

Wow, how convenient.

Instead of stealing one or two cards (since I don't carry all my credit cards with me at one time)
A thief can now just steal my vault and get access to not only my credit cards, but get discounts at my grocery store!

I gotta go with the last line... It sounds cool, but it's just more hassle to actually use come purchase time.
"Honey, this was a lovely dinner of sushi, are you sure this isn't too expensive"
"No problem, I'm just going to pay with my pocket vault... and...uh"
"What's wrong?"
"I've got soy sauce on the fingerprint scanner and now it won't authenticate me and give me my credit card!"
"Don't you have cash?"
"I don't use cash because I have the pocket vault! AUUGGGHH THE BATTERY WENT DEAD!"

Credit cards are free, why pay $200?

Let me list the reasons why

1) Cumbersome

2) Breakable

3) All eggs in one basket

4) A lost/stolen card is replaced by the credit card company. Who replaces that lost/stolen $200 computer?

5) What do you do when the batteries run out

6) What happens when the OS crashes and the information is wiped out?

So many reasons...

Re:Credit cards are free, why pay $200?

1) Cumbersome
Picture shows that it fits in a wallet
Picture is clearly photoshopped. The real consumer product has yet to ship.

2) Breakable
You can always use your real credit cards. What if a palm pilot breaks? You write things down on paper. . .
That's nice, but you're still out the $200 device.

3) All eggs in one basket
Agree with this.. would rather not have everything linked in one breakable / trackable / hackable system.
Good, so there's no risk of you wasting $200 on this.

4) A lost/stolen card is replaced by the credit card company. Who replaces that lost/stolen $200 computer?
You spill pasta sauce on your sweater, you buy a new one and are much more careful if it is expensive.
My solution is to not wear $200 shirts very often, and definitely not to eat pasta while doing so. A $200 device had better be durable if it's going to live in my pocket.

5) What do you do when the batteries run out
Considering the plethora or small handheld devices out there, why is this one so much harder to track charge for?
Because having my MP3 player stop playing music isn't as embarassing as not being able to buy what I just took to the checkout.

6) What happens when the OS crashes and the information is wiped out?
Well, you reload the data from either the credit cards again or the backup that was made
You're most likely to discover such a failure while shopping... again, the embarassment situation.

Fun with Fingerprints: Chamelon Card

The Chamelon Card system uses a fingerprint reader to secure the data vault. Fingerprint readers can be defeated using a simple hack involving common household items. I refer interested readers to the following article: http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0205.html. [schneier.com]

To quote George Carlin...

"...get a hold of some fucking cash, will ya?"

What about replacements?

What if my Chameleon Card is lost or stolen? With conventional plastic, I can call the issuer, report the card lost/stolen, and have a replacement sent within a couple of days for free (be wary of those companies that would charge you for this service). What is my recourse with Chameleon? Ponying up another $200? Also, what if I destroyed my original cards when transferring their data to the Chameleon device? Is there an online backup somewhere? Or am I shit out of luck?

Start simple -- digital cash

I think it would be much easier to start with a simpler problem: digital cash. I would love to have a card that can hold up to about $100 that is anonymous and which I could use for bus fare, parking meters, road tolls, or small purchases like meals. This would be a natural for on-line purchases of paid content (iTunes, archived news stories).

By being anonymous, my privacy would be protected (at least in theory). It would also be completely unconnected to my credit cards and bank accounts, so it could never be used to steal more than $100 from me.

This is not a trivial problem -- it has some of the same problems as voting (anonymity & non-repudiation).

I think this is already being done in Europe. If only the US would catch up.

A Lord Of The Rings Moment

One Card to rule them all, one Card to find them
One Card to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Cameleon Network where the Shadows lie.

This will never fly

- It's expensive. Too expensive for a trinket that might be lost/damaged in everyday life. Credit card lost? No biggie - you just cancel it, request new one. At worst you pay few bucks fee for replacement card.

- Lose this trinket, and you just gave *every damn card/id thingy ya had* to a thief. Yeah yeah its fingerprint keyed. So what? The data is inside and everything is ultimately hackable.

- It can obiviously be used to swipe magnetic strip data off other people's cards you may be able to handle. As a bonus if it can 'dupe' smartcards, Visa & co wont be happy - they just spent gazillions in moving every (insecure) magnetic card to ones with chip inside. I think their timetable is something like by end of 2005 every Visa card is a smartcard. I'd expect credit card companies to sue the pants off this company for unauthorized reverse engineering of their security features against duplication in the cards. DMCA will be used to pwn these guys. (And if it does *not* dupe smartcards, it will be useless in couple of years when every card becomes one)

- Big credit card companies will just tell to the retailers not to accept anything except Genunie Visa(r) Card(tm) :) - logos and all. And if you expect chameleon cards to be allowed to display those logos, think again. Not to mention that a chameleon card would either have to display gazillion different logos (fishy, wouldn't pass in most stores without tons of education and approval of credit card companies), or you'd need a custom card for every card you have - in which case the whole toy is useless.

- Huge hassles with most clerks refusing the cards 'swiped on' with this trinket even without guidance from credit card companies - "that's not a visa card, are you trying to fool me with some thieves tool with copied card data?". The education required to train every damn minimum wage clerk in the world to identify and accept this thingy in place of a real card would be astronomical - EVEN if the card companies would go along with it.

Dot.com boom coming back? This company is beyond loony to even attempt to develop something this stupid.

Size matters, but in the spy business...

... smaller is better.

This'll be great if it takes up less space in my wallet than a half dozen cards. Otherwise, I'll wait for a future, slimmer, version.

Seriously, though, this could be a great idea. Three credit cards, a driver's license, three insurance cards (dental, medical, and auto)... plus a bunch of other cards I don't carry because I rarely use them (voter's registration card, etc) and are therefore at perpetual risk of being lost; this thing has a lot of potential.

The owner is in control of the information on the device, and it appears actually safer than carrying regular credit cards since it can't be used by thieves (assuming it also proves to be secure). My only questions center around the RFID tag, but they could be easily satisfied.

Not on the strip

So what about the material not stored on the magnetic strip? The security number, and such. Not all the information on a credit card etc is on the strip and to truely be effective it's going to have to store this information.

Plus, can I sit on it?

This is bad and misunderstands cc theft

Credit card thieves dont physically steal the card anymore. Most often they have their own card reader like this device and they will swipe your card an extra time under the table and pretend it didnt go through the first time.

A week or two later they make a fake card with your magnetic stripe and usually go on a 5000 dollar (the usual single day limit on most cards) spending spree and then fence the goods. The consumer discovers 5000 dollars on his card, usually from stuff purchased when he was in another state, at work, on the international space station, etc and calls the bank up. They issue a new card and reimburse the money.

This happened to me, and not ONCE did my card leave my wallet.

The only real solution to credit card thievery is to have intelligent software that tracks the spending habits of the legitimate user and requires extra verification before allowing out-of-the-ordinary purchases. Like if someone normally buys nothing but gas and groceriers with a credit card and suddenly buys 3000 dollars worth of stereo equipment 200 miles from where they live.... red flag!

Card Reader

What do you think of this?

You get a single card that can store all your info, and a card reader at home. You slip the card in before you head out and unlock all the elements of it using the card reader and some kind of authentication thing like a public key (I like codes that thieves will not expect you to know off the top of your head, like a 4-digit PIN--that's dangerous...but can you see a crook saying, "Give me your Universal Card and your public key"?). You could say, unlock all my credit and debit until 8pm tonight, and leave the Visa and Mastercard unlocked until 10pm.

You have to choose a default credit account that stays on all the time, but if you make too many purchases with it while the rest of the card is locked, the credit card company calls you and lets you know. That's it. They don't shut it off, they don't even have to have a live person call you. They just call you and say, "Someone's charging on your locked card, is it you?"

Of course, if you prefer the credit company to be liable, then you have to allow them to shut it off if purchases don't match your typical buying profile whether it's locked or unlocked. If you want the freedom to never have your card shut off, then you agree to pay the charges.

I don't see the point of keeping things the way they are. I don't know about you guys, but I keep all my credit cards right next to each other, so if I ever get mugged, I'm going to lose them all anyway, along with my ID. So I say stick 'em all on the same piece of plastic so I only have to track one thing. And you have to admit, it's definitely more secure than cash any way you cut it. Someone gets your cash, and what recourse do you have?

sev

What are they hiding?

Is it just me, or does it seem a little odd to other people that several of the principals listed on their web page (including the CTO) remain anonymous? Why the heck would anyone do that? Most companies at this stage splash the identities of their principals everywhere. These guys must have some pretty bad skeletons in their closet to hide like this.

Re:Use fake telephone numbers

Remember, /. people are intelligent, and intelligent people conceal identity whenever possible.

So Linus, RMS, that ESR guy... they're all dumbasses then?

There's a difference between concealing your identiity and making sure that your private data stays that way.