At 03:41 PM 1/16/96, you wrote:
I thought you might find this interesting...
Thanks, that is very cool beyond just ecommerce, because what does it mean for personal encryption? If I buy one of these doo-hickeys for $100, and so do you, does that mean we don't have to buy an AT&T 3600 (secure phone) to talk securely, and also not have to worry about Clipper crap? Or (as it probably is) does that mean we _have_ to talk through this company and it only sends tiny bits of info from the card reader... (it'd be cool if you could modify it...) Interesting.
found at:http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9601/encryption/index.html New security device may broaden business on the web
January 16, 1996 Web posted at: 9:30 p.m EST (1430 GMT)
From Correspondent Marsha Walton
ATLANTA (CNN) -- For cyberspace marketers, The World Wide Web is a potential world wide mall, an electronic marketplace for consumer goods and services.
But for now, most visitors are window-shopping, not buying. A new survey by the University of Michigan shows consumers are wary of purchasing goods online for fear their credit card numbers will be misappropriated.
People who think nothing of giving their credit card number to an anonymous voice over the phone or handing their card to a waitress at a restaurant, flinch at the thought of putting that number into a computer.
But a New Jersey, ISED Corp., has created a device that secures transactions, both on the Internet and over the telephone. It's called SED, or secure encryption device. It costs about a hundred dollars, attaches to a phone or a PC and operates with the swipe of either a credit or ATM card.
"What the device will really allow is consumers a new form of payment from home using their ATM card. They'll be able to purchase goods and services or whatever on the internet, " said Roger Payne, an engineer for BT Labs which is testing the product.
Potentially vulnerable personal account information is scrambled or encrypted on the magnetic stripe on the card. It is electronically transferred through the hardware. That eliminates the need to say or "key in" the account number or expiration date.
"So that if somebody who is not supposed to be looking at it, they can't understand what's in there," said Grant Helmendach whose company BUYPASS processes three quarters of a billion financial transactions a year.
BUYPASS is marketing SED to "mom and pop" retailers which charge goods by making an imprint of credit cards, relying on paper transactions that are costlier, and less secure.
"Lots of folks want to focus on the Walmarts of the world. not a lot of people have focused on the smaller specialty shops, specialty retailers, and what folks at SED have done, is built a terminal that's very inexpensive, so they can play in this game. They have financial incentive to do that," said Helmendach.
As buying by computer catches on, the device could eventually be used to pay for everything from a pizza delivery to bailing a friend out of jail, and would be as much a part of the home computer as a floppy disk or a hard drive.
And just as consumers have grown accustomed to computers and ATM cards, the combination of the two could be another step toward a "cashless" society.
_______________________ Regards, If God intended one space between sentences, why do we have two thumbs? - ? Joseph Reagle http://farnsworth.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle@mit.edu 0C 69 D4 E8 F2 70 24 33 B4 5E 5E EC 35 E6 FB 88