To Pay With Your Credit Card, Please Speak Up

prostoalex writes "It's reasonable easy for a thief to steal the social security number and bank account information (which is printed on a check) as well as an address. The next generation of financial tools are fighting this problem. Business Week talks about voice verification in future debit and credit cards. "Here's how it works: A special sensor on the credit card stores its owner's previously recorded voiceprint in digital form. When the owner receives a new card, he or she speaks a password into the sensor on the card. If the voiceprint matches, the card is activated.""

Comments

Credit Card pranking is over then?

[saskboy]

Zug.com has a funny prank, that was listed on /. the other month, about someone signing his credit card receipts with phony names or pictures.

I tried it, it's no problem, just sign all of your bills "It's Me", no one cares.

Why does a SSN need to be attached?

[rattler14]

No really, I'm am really curious. I admit, I wear a tin-foiled hat with pride, but I've recieved some pretty BS responses from banks when asked this question.

The worst response? "You need it on your account for your protection". Oh really? Until, I don't know, 1 of the 100 forms my SSN is one gets scanned and posted somewhere on the internet.

And for those that think it can't happen, some dipshit made a family tree of all of my family across the country and posted it on the internet... 1 out of 10 (out of ~600 people... this tree goes back pretty far) has a SSN posted and it's now in google's cache.

So I ask again... why is a SSN required for a bank account? What about those people withouth SSNs?

Re:Why does a SSN need to be attached?

[Anonymous Coward]

I once knew a guy who lost his credit after an exterminator stumbled onto his dead wifes Social Security Card and drivers license. He started receiving bills in her name almost 10 years after her death. Even the SSNs of dead people are vulnerable to identity fraud.

I would be real impressed...

[Lead Butthead]

Considering that voice recognization is still rather unreliable (particularly when people get excited and such) I would think it's a bad idea until reliablity improves.

It would be rather sad trying to pay for caugh drops with ATM/CC but unable to do so because the sore throat is causing your voice print to shift.

Working in the wrong direction

[theguywhosaid]

Rather than working to make it harder to use a stolen credit card, companies should work at making it easier to find somebody using a stolen credit card. Maybe start requesting that stores associate a purchase with a time and a checkout lane, which could lead to accessing security camera archives once a purchase is claimed fraudulent by the account holder. I am sure there are more possibilities.

Re:Working in the wrong direction

[griblik]

Ok, start the fun - they do this in england :)

My GF had a new card stolen from her mail, and only noticed 3 days later when her account was empty. The police went to the store where the largest purchase was made and caught the thieves from the CCTV footage.

I'm going with the 'public place, CCTV warnings all over, you should expect your privacy to be compromised, especially since you're on someone else's property' position.

Flame on :)

Slightly on-topic (sorry, I had to), some form of card initialisation would have prevented this happening. It was the fact that the card worked straight out of the envelope that allowed the scumbags to spend the money.

I can't stand the rain...

[DumbSwede]

I use to work at Wolfram Research and when they moved into their new building the building was protected after hours by a voice activated entry device. This was about 14 years ago. Anyway the device worked reasonably well except when it was raining. There was no awning or other overhang, so in driving rain when you would really like to get in - well you just couldn't. The idea was to be a cost saver by not having to issue individual cards. Oh yeah they ripped the thing out after about a two months. One of the employees (I don't remember who) took it as a challenge to slowly modify his voice entry phrase to something else slowly day by day, by slowing morphing one phoneme at a time into something else. I wish I had a list of phrases he changed from and to, but I don't.

This was good technology applied in a bad way. As one of more than one way of activating a card this would be a good thing. Thieves are a skittish lot, even if they could sign for card use or use a stolen PIN, the fact they would be expected to voice activate the card first would deter them, not wishing to draw undue attention to themselves.

Even 14 years ago this technology had a extremely low false positive rate misidentifying someone as someone else. Even 25 years ago I seem to remember this technology being not being prone to misidentification, though more finicky and with a much smaller vocabulary (like 10 words).