[114240] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Dutch Transport Card Broken
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Harald Koch)
Tue Jan 29 17:29:34 2008
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:49:27 -0500
From: Harald Koch <chk@pobox.com>
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
In-Reply-To: <EED81E3EA6E3D24BBC4ABE7A5544874402DABB36@de01exm69.ds.mot.com>
Crawford Nathan-HMGT87 wrote:
> Why require contactless in the first place?
>
> Is swiping one's card, credit-card style too difficult for the average
> user?
As compared to slapping your wallet on the reader? yes.
I swipe my Visa / debit / Tim Horton's cards regularly. With the
plethora of bad reader technology out there, no matter how practiced I
am it sometimes takes 2-3 tries to get a good read. Heck, sales clerks
who swipe hundreds of times per day sometimes have trouble. And that's
with a relatively easy to read magnetic stripe...
GO Transit here in Toronto ran a pilot program with contactless
stored-value fare cards several years ago, which worked quite well; I'm
sure technology details are available via Google. Alas, the project got
squashed by a political movement for a Greater Toronto Area fare card
project (which still hasn't gone anywhere 5-6 years later...).
--
Harald
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