Preparing for my latest overseas business trip, my online banking readers and tokens have been proudly promoted to the final mandatory check for travel along with... passport? ticket? cash? credit card? I'm gathering quite a collection of them now, and given
the amount of airmiles they're undertaking I'm considering giving them their own loyalty card with their favourite airlines.
In all seriousness - what a pain!
Then I read with great interest Mr Ross Anderson and his colleagues at Cambridge University found weaknesses when they reverse engineered card readers from Barclays and NatWest. I guess it's no surprise to the majority of us. The true impact of the findings
are of course the burning questions we want to know about.
Access the paper here>>>
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/fc09optimised.pdf
Whilst the success of significantly preventing online fraud spiraling out of control over the past couple of years will no doubt be attributed to the gadget, and I'm fully supportive of the initiative (having been involved in it), I've yet to be asked to
verify myself over the phone when I spend, or service any of my various financial relationships with these organizations, and was amazed at the various security questions, reminders, passwords, pins, and code combinations I was expected to provide in response
to my request to change an address whilst all the time the card reader sits relatively unused in the bag!
As a great boss once told me....never criticise; criticise and provide a solution.
So maybe I'll go and pop into my local branch instead so they can check my signature against the sample they took from me 15 years ago.