[39703] in Cypherpunks
Re: USA Today on Fear of Credit Cards over Net
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Wed Sep 20 23:49:36 1995
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 20 Sep 1995 15:27:22 PDT."
<AL9OmyczByUU075yn@netcom.com>
Reply-To: perry@piermont.com
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 19:35:56 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Re: The risk of credit cards.
I suppose that indeed there are large risks elsewhere in the credit
card system. However, I think that the credit card system itself is
stupid and insecure and ought to be scrapped -- sending around account
numbers as magic keys to get payment is a stupid move. Its not
suprising how large credit card fraud is.
One of the great hopes I have for cryptographic technology is its
ability to lower the incidence of fraud, and thus lower transaction
costs a lot. Someday, hopefully, everyone will be able to be a credit
card merchant because you won't have to trust the merchants not to
steal.
Perry
