Community

Hi Stanley,

First, thank you for your blog. It's always a pleasure to read you.

Now concerning Cheques, I doubt that they can be abolished this easily.

We still use them widely in France.

I'm gonna certainly write a blog about it to give you a proper answer and raise a voice for the "NO" to the abolition.

Feel free to read and comment this blog to come. I would really appreciate to have your point of view.

Where is the most important opinion? The opinion of CLIENTS !!!???!!!

Who cares if all the banks agree to vote "NO"?

In France, cheques are still widely used (Sorry, we are roughly 30 years behind Finland but we're doing our best).

You can pay your bills, pay a peer, delay or divide payments...

And "8 cts fee per form" is not an alternative for the french market. It would certainly be a new revenue for the bank but not a new option for the clients.

I think there is a key component missing here:

The opinion of the users !

Do you really think people would appreciate being forced to have 2 cards because specialists think it's better for them?

Ask them also what they think of VBV or SecureCode that has been thrown away at their face without notice asking for their birthdate in order to "secure" their online transaction.

Before adopting a solution, the users' opinion should be mandatory.

A poll is necessary, but a real one, independent. Not from "an independent survey company" that is sponsored by banks or payment networks.

Prego :-)

Very interesting. Thank you.

I think the link to your first video is missing.

Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/user/stungundotcom#p/u/0/5zJRzSqad-A

The global YouTube Channel link being:

http://www.youtube.com/user/stungundotcom

Hi Stephen,

It is a very interesting topic you are talking about.

Even if I'm not convinced that you are on the right track you seem passionate and only good things come out of it.

However when you say:

Merchants (or Acquirers) might levy a surcharge of 1% or so for manually entered data in line with the elevated risk, to help shoppers switch behaviour.

You cannot be serious.

You are missing a very important component in this analysis: the client.

You cannot FORCE him to change his behavior.

Are you really serious when you say you want to surcharge 1% to the client?

Either you really don't believe in your system or you are convinced that others don't. In any case you are killing your penetration rate even before starting.

The question in everyone's head when buying something or using a service is very simple WIIFM: What's in it for me?

I'm sure that you don't think that clients are interested in security because that would be a joke, they simply don't care.

They only care about more of "things they like" and less "things they don't like".

Security is none of their concern.

Simply ask yourself what you honestly would like to have as a consumer. And be honest. Forget that you are selling smart cards and you'll find the key to success.

Consumers in the US right now want to keep their houses, have more money, be happy again by any mean. They don't give a **** about security and definitely wouldn't pay for it.

Consumers in Australia, well you know them better than me. But you need to put them at the center of any of your decisions, otherwise none of them will buy any of your ideas or systems.

Interesting.

However, the list of people we are supposed to trust is quite surprising.

If I had to list people we can absolutely not trust right now I would list exactly

"Credit reference agencies, banks, doctors, dentists, government employees"

How would it work in such a case?
What if I do not trust anyone? (which is a reasonable approach when talking about ID Theft according to a lot of people who are blogging here)

Hi Roberto,

Thanks for this focus on a topic quite often forgotten: cookies.

There's been a long way since the time they were created as simple text files in order to remember who you are when you come back and what you've done for statistics.

For the Cleaning Process:

I also strongly recommend CCleaner, it's known to be one of the best out there in the freeware world.
I can also recommend Advanced System Care from IOBIT. It is a very strong contender as it combines Spyware Removal, Registry Fix, Privacy Sweep and Junk Files Clean.
Using both is not a bad idea.

For the Browsing Process:

I would simply recommend to have several browsers, one for each "type" of browsing".

I would recommend Google Chrome for the simple surf, as it's fast simple and very secure with its Sandbox Environment architecture.

I would recommend Mozilla Firefox (with an Add-on called NoScript) for secure browsing as it would add the dimension of "controlling" what is executed while you browse.

Hi Roberto,

Please keep up the good work, it's much appreciated by a lot of people and those who criticize anonymously don't last on the long term.

Some people are simply not creative and the only way they found to exist is to try to destroy everything that is around them. So be it.

Cedric

Hi Seyan,

The short answer is NO.

PUBLIC INTERNET ACCESS ARE NOT SECURE.

As explained by Roberto, when you use a public access (WiFi or not), someone is providing you with an access.

BUT, they know everything you do, they can replay any of the credentials you use, even if you are on an HTTPS connection. They can control ALL the traffic that goes in and out through them.

Moreover, public internet places are the best spots for hackers, they simply have to put a honeypot and wait. Hackers LOVE cybercafés.

A safe behavior would be to use free internet access only to browse, and avoid to use any confidential credentials. That would definitely be my recommendation.

Cedric