On Tue Nov 14, 1995, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
attempts to get secure credit card number transfer on the internet are not an end in themselves. they are the first steps toward an entirely new transaction system. those who see a single step and criticize it as feeble in the context of past systems are missing the point and apparently can't think past the present nanosecond of their lives.
You'll have a hard convincing folks that they need something better than what works perfectly well today. Here's another point that I didn't see in your list. Today it might be just as safe to send your CC# over the internet as giving it to a clerk, etc. This is mostly because the number of CC#'s sent over the net vs the whole traffic is small. It is therefore not very cost effective to try to steal credit card numbers over the net vs other means (searching through dumpsters, taping a phone line near LL Bean, etc.). If CC# purchases became common over the net, it would become much more valuable to try to steal them from the net and more people would. It would then become much less secure, not for any technical reason but because there will be more crooks exploiting the existing flaws. Where is it most common to steal cellular phone id's (I'm not sure what they are called, but the id's sent that someone can steal to build a forged cell phone)? At airports. Why? Because more cell phones are used there, everyone uses one as they get on or off a plane. If you want to troll for id's, go to where there are many. Howard