The Amazon Key, what a great idea!
Nowadays, lots of people order things online, and get the items sent to their homes. And inevitably of course, sometimes the delivery driver will attempt to deliver something when you're not at home, happens all the time.
And so, in a fit of brilliance, Amazon have invented something they call The Amazon Key. This is a great system whereby delivery drivers can, when they try to deliver to a house where no one is home, unlock and open your front door, and leave the items in your house, awaiting your return. On the plus side, it does come with a camera, so you can see that the delivery person doesn't do anything wrong, on the minus side, the system is connected to the 'net which means it can be hacked (and so the concept of security is non-existent), you're giving some of your own control to a faceless multi-billionaire company, and you're letting strangers into your home, albeit hopefully very briefly and (if the camera works and doesn't get hacked) and monitored for security.
No, I'm not making it up. There's a review of it here:
Here's a review of it
It's an interesting read.
And so, in a fit of brilliance, Amazon have invented something they call The Amazon Key. This is a great system whereby delivery drivers can, when they try to deliver to a house where no one is home, unlock and open your front door, and leave the items in your house, awaiting your return. On the plus side, it does come with a camera, so you can see that the delivery person doesn't do anything wrong, on the minus side, the system is connected to the 'net which means it can be hacked (and so the concept of security is non-existent), you're giving some of your own control to a faceless multi-billionaire company, and you're letting strangers into your home, albeit hopefully very briefly and (if the camera works and doesn't get hacked) and monitored for security.
No, I'm not making it up. There's a review of it here:
Here's a review of it
It's an interesting read.
Comments
Download the latest version of Bomb Munchies Ver2210 4th July 2020
Download the latest version of Bomb Munchies Ver2210 4th July 2020
@luny@mstdn.games
https://www.luny.co.uk
No, lol. :D
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Someone at work mentioned how her bank or credit card uses contact-less payment, that near field thing where you just put your card close to the paying-device, and the device automatically takes the specified amount of money from your bank account, and asked me was this safe. I said no, and that I wouldn't use a card like that, and she said that she didn't know it was until a friend pointed it out to her.
So I checked my bank debit card, and it does have the near field symbol on it! So I nipped into Sainsburys, tried the card on a serve-yourself machine, and it worked. I didn't have to enter a PIN or anything, just wave the card near the card reader, and it automatically paid the bill.
Now (a) the bank definitely didn't tell me that the card did this, (b) I don't want it, as it's obviously open to theft, and (c) if the card has near field technology built in, then why do they still require you to enter your pin number when you put the card into a reader? Since they've dispensed with the security for the contact-less system (which requires no PIN entry or other manual form of identification, not even a "Yes, I want to perform this transaction" type user confirmation), then they may as well have said "**** it, let's drop the requirement for a PIN number for when the card is inserted into a reader, like we've done with near field stupidology"
What's to stop someone making a portable reader that they can carry around covertly in a crowd and that scans bank cards in people's bags?
Yup, my thoughts exactly. You can go to the bank and ask for a non-contactless card, if the counter staff deny all knowledge of them existing then ask for the manager and they'll get things sorted.
Download the latest version of Bomb Munchies Ver2210 4th July 2020
In the UK royal mail happily leave non-signature items, but usually in a discrete place. And private carriers refuse to leave anything unless they have a signature, and will even ignore any notes you leave asking the to leave packages unsigned-for.
Here it seems to be the other way round. USPS will only leave in locked mailed boxes, and require the signature for signed-for items, but private carriers almost never do. It must cause a big headache for the insurance companies and for Amazon.
I don't know is if this is a difference in the culture, or if there are different services being used.
I lost a ZX-Uno Antonio sent from Spain, because they left it on the doorstep when it should have required a signature. Antonio kindly sent a replacement which arrived safely, and he will hopefully get his costs back from the insurance claim :(
SevenFFF / Threetwosevensixseven / colonel32
NXtel • NXTP • ESP Update • ESP Reset • CSpect Plugins
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Or just not use the contactless thing. I've not once shopped anywhere that's insisted I use it.
That's a relief. I was sure there'd be a limit, but I was worried that it would be something in the hundreds.
Understood. Leaving this (still pretty stupid, if you ask me) near field payment aside, it is great though how you can use a bank card to pay (using your PIN!) in most shops and businesses nowadays, it's a lot more convenient than when you mostly had to pay cash or cheque back in the 1980s. Though just to balance it out, the 1980s did have the advantage that back then you got rather more than the 0.00001% interest on the money in your bank account that they give you now.
Still, someone has to pay for all the debt and trouble the 2008 bank crash created, and it's only fair that it's the 99.99999% of the population who didn't cause or benefit from the crash that should have to pay for it. That's what the poor are for, after all: to pay taxes.
Apparently the gap between rich and poor is so bad that the richest eight people in the world own half of the world's wealth: fortune.com/2017/01/16/world-richest-men-income-equality/
No, you're missing the point. The point is that I don't want my card to have such a risky system at all. I might not (definitely won't) ever use it deliberately, but how can I be sure that my card isn't surreptitiously read, and then either used once to make a financial transfer that I don't know about, or even that when someone has my card's details, that they don't then keep those details, and use them to make several or many transfers?
Maybe. But people often say that about potential problems, until they prove to be true. And as we've seen countless times, if a system has a vulnerability, then people can and often will come up with clever ways to make a profit out of it.
How dangerous is it, even? Americans are allowed to carry guns everywhere, and do you ever heard of those potential problems?
Oh, and I do carry a NFC-enabled card. But since I don't really have any money in the bank and I use a NFC-protective sleeve, it's really not that worrying for me. But I wouldn't suggest anyone else using it. I've turned off the near-field abilities of my parents' cards, for example.
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That's fair enough. In that case, the RF-blocking wallet/sleeve that i love the z80s and Timmy mentioned is the way to go.
To get the card to cough up its secrets requires an encrypted conversation with the on-board chip, just like the newest chip & pin bank machines do.
It's true that with a directional antenna you can increase the range over which you can have that exchange, but you still need to be in on the encryption. You can't simply record the signals sent once and re-send them either, as the encryption makes sure they're not the same twice - the Nazis figured that one out a century ago!
The near-field payment machines are actually a hell of a lot more secure than those grey pyramid card & PIN-keypad readers that appeared in supermarkets and petrol stations up and down the country last decade. They would read your card number and pass your PIN around inside unencrypted. There were even serial data contacts on the circuit board and more than enough room to fit an SMS transmitter inside the case if you wanted to send every card's details to the other side of the world.
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