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20051013 Thursday October 13, 2005

 The Swizz of the Cards...

Another piece of excellent eclectech animation for you on the subject of ID Cards...

The 'Swizz of the Cards' - No, you're not in Kansas anymore... Lots of fun. ;-)

There are a few of serious points in this that do bear examining though.

The author of this little ditty calls into question how well the registration process for the card will work (ably illustrated by straw man handing over a fistful of readies). He/She/They are correct in pointing out that registration is the point at which fraud is most likely, a problem we're working on right now... sorry can't give out the details at this stage, but you'll like it.

Secondly, there is a glaring mistake on the use of the ID Card to verify somebody elses transaction. In the animation the card is stolen and inserted into a 'PC' to verify a fraudulent transaction. Because it is a valid ID card the transaction goes through.

The author has missed the point that the card needs to be valid and somehow authenticated with the individual using it before it's accepted (two factor authentication). Just pinching somebodies ID card won't work, atleast, not digitally. (Might do as photo ID though). A bit of scare mongering going on there m'thinks.

How is this authentication done? Well biometrics is one answer (and yes, we all know about those problems), but there are other answers too. We're also working on how you might be able to 'switch off'/invalidate a card without the card being physically anywhere near a 'terminal'... can't tell you about that either, but you'll like it. ;-)

The point that you don't need to have multiple identities to commit fraud is a good one though. Most benefit fraud is due to false claim reporting, not multiple identities.

Still, a good piece of animation, looking forward to more!

( Oct 13 2005, 02:22:23 PM BST / Oct 13 2005, 01:37:32 PM BST ) Permalink Comments [1]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/Drew/entry/the_swizz_of_the_cards

Trackback URL: http://blogs.sun.com/Drew/entry/the_swizz_of_the_cards
Comments:

In the animation the card is stolen and inserted into a 'PC' to verify a fraudulent transaction. Because it is a valid ID card the transaction goes through.The author has missed the point that the card needs to be valid and somehow authenticated with the individual using it before it's accepted

I think you may have missed the point that the proposed ID cards will be entirely useless for preventing on-line credit card fraud. Unless companies start insisting on customers installing certified tamper-proof(!) biometric scanners and attaching them to their PCs before accepting on-line transactions, it will not be possible for ID cards to prevent "card not present" (CNP) fraud. Thus the insertion of the ID card into the PC demonstrates the absurdity of the Home Office claims that ID cards will prevent identity theft.

Perhaps the Belgian scheme, which includes digitial signatures, could do something to reduce CNP fraud; the British scheme will not.

Posted by Geraint on October 13, 2005 at 04:26 PM BST #

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