Chips, and PINS

[sobrique]

OK. So there's these smartcard chips in cards these days.
And in order to be able to use them, you need to key in your PIN.
This supposedly makes it more secure.

WHY OH WHY CAN YOU ONLY USE 4 DIGIT PINS.

Seriously, I can read what you're typing off your keyboard with a good degree of accuracy. It's really really trivial to see what someone typed on a PIN pad. And the best bit, is even if I miss one, and don't know whether it was 1,2 or 3 on that particular row or column, I can try all of them!

Now I'm not saying all pins should be a _mandatory_ 16 digits, but please don't limit me to the 'brain dead obvious' 4 digits.

And please, Supermarkets, those keypads are ALSO card readers. YOU DO NOT GET TO HOLD MY CARD. EVER.

If I can't secure it based on that blindingly trival number I type in, then I can at least try and prevent you cloning my card.

Grr.

Comments

[tenuous.livejournal.com]

What you need is a combined debit and ID card :-)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I almost did read somebody's PIN back to them in a shop to show them how obviously they'd just typed it in.

[kal-357.livejournal.com]

Feeling excitable?

[kalkyrie.livejournal.com]

How much organised theft is based around credit cards nowadays? Wish government would stop messing around with ID cards and spend time sorting this out (or sorting anything out to be honest).

[mcnazgul.livejournal.com]

My personal favourite is the chip & pin machine hooked up to a till which prints out your full card number & expiry details, a copy of which is kept behind the bar. I explained this to the manager who looked at me blankly.
I grinned and amended his copy of the receipt then the light came on.

As for the 4 digit PIN blues, I just imagined having to deal with the six digit numbers added to the list of infinite recursion which is the number of PINs, passwords and key phrases. I'm pushing the low fifties I think...

You just have to be careful and look at where they keep the till.

[necessitysslave.livejournal.com]

does it get the 3 digit number on the back which you now need for online sales?

[mcnazgul.livejournal.com]

Beats me, the last one I had was shredded as soon as I got it home.

Mind you, I don't remember you having to quote that number when you order stuff by telephone (e.g. florists). Doing it over the net does require additional checks and balances - since some bright spark decided it would be 'convenient' to store your cc details when you do online transactions...