Text 9595, 57 rader
Skriven 2010-07-29 10:55:34 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
   Kommentar till text 9586 av Dale Shipp (1:261/1466.0)
Ärende: Paypal
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Dale Shipp wrote to Robert Bashe on Thursday July 29 2010 at 00:00:

DS> There are credit card companies that will issue you a "one-time-only"
DS> credit card number for online transactions.  After you use it, it is
DS> not valid for any other purchases.

Never heard of this, at least not in Germany. What they _do_ have here is some
kind of a "security" registration of the credit card (Master and Visa) data
that can be utilized by subscribing Internet sellers. It's not yet widely used,
but my Visa /Master cards are registered (in one case involuntarily, I might
add - I didn't want to do this starting from a seller's website and being
redirected to Visa but in the case in point had no choice).

RB>> What can be abused with the mere information of your account number,
RB>> bank  routing number and your name in the States? That would be no
RB>> problem here in the EU.

DS> If you had that info, and could guess a password...

... which, in the States, is often not too difficult. Some (all?) banks allow
you to use your Social Security Number as a password, which is about the
stupidest thing I've ever heard of. But there are apparently people who
actually do such things.

DS> ... you could access some accounts online. My bank (credit union) has
DS> a number of security safeguards to help block even that, but not all
DS> banks are as strict.

American Banks don't know the meaning of the word "Security" in Internet
banking (the best I've ever seen was a bank where you had to log in and then a
key was sent to your email address, after which you had to log in again with
the key - but that was an exception).

But on the other hand, since you can only access the account data and have a
check to be sent by mail to a recipient address (so-called "electronic payment"
in the States), the danger is much less than in Europe, where you can transfer
money from acount to account (domestic or internationally) online.

Here in Germany, the security involved in making transfers is incomparably
higher than that in the States. You first have to log on (with a PIN) to see
the account data. Then you have another security routine to go through to make
a bank transfer (individually numbered, one-time transaction numbers from a
list, a transaction number sent as an SMS to your cellphone or one calculated
with a little device that looks like a pocket calculator - where you have to
put your chip card from the bank in and then calculate the transaction number).

And before we get into the question of "electronic payments" again, with you
saying that direct account transfers are also used in the States, let me just
remark: "Sure, but only for payments to government agencies, utilities and
large corporations". When we're talking abuse, we're referring to individuals,
and _they_ do not receive direct account transfers from other individuals in
the USA, as is routinely the case in Europe.

Cheers, Bob

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