November 7, 2006
I always lose rock-paper-scissors. Always. And raffles? Forget it! But my coworkers and I just played the finger game: like rock-paper-scissors game, except you put out one or two fingers. Odd finger(s) out wins. And I won two tickets to the USC-Cal game for next weekend from my boss!
Free tickets to my first college football game, how cool!
I know I’m not.
I’d forgotten about the contactless smart card rollout until I read Liz Pulliam West’s article about them. Obviously they advocate an even higher convenience level of card usage, and she points out some security concerns that I thought were pretty obvious, but glosses over the concern that I thought was far more relevant: how many of us need help spending money faster?
She says that jokingly, but seriously, forget for a moment about the possibilities of identity theft and think about the true culprit in many of our financial lives: *hey, stop looking over your shoulder, I’m talkin’ to you!* I’m not one to blame technology for the actions of its users, but it seems like the probability of overspending with this handy dandy new form of payment is just not worth the novelty.
How many people really need a credit card transaction made so easy that they don’t even have to look at a receipt OR sign it?
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Yeah, I really don’t think credit cards were all that hard to use in the first place. It’s just sooo difficult to actually hand the card to the cashier, or even worse, have to swipe it yourself and sign the electronic pad!
Yeah that automatic thing sounds like a risky business.
I am not sure what technology they are going to use, but I hope thieves dont’ start using some radio frequency receiver to start stealing card numbers…that would be very easy to do even without looking over your shoulder š
* Kira: Yeah, I can see how dumbing down credit cards EVEN MORE would be worthwhile ….
* Golbguru: As the author suggested, perhaps a tinfoil hat, but for your wallet? Crooks could do a brisk business in the credit protection racket! š