In comments on this thread (on the inexorable forward march o' the Xmas Season) someone calls shenanigans on the holiday version of those Visa check card commercials. You know the ones (I'm sure you hate them as much as I do) -- the ones that suggest that your duty is to be brainless shopping automaton and that if you dare to use cash for a transaction you will be scorned as some sort of iconclastic anarchist and troublemaker. I know we all want to live in the future and all that but ads like that make we want to pay for everything in pennies.
In further surprising news, y'know that big plan by Bush last week to save us all from holiday travel delays? Total bullshit.
(Shocked! Shocked I am!)
House of Dioxin
Now Appearing Nightly in the Exotic Mondo Mundo Lounge
So here's my question: some of those Visa ads are about those new cards that merely need to be waved in front of some sort of sensor in order to complete the transaction. No signature, no PIN, no nothing, for purchases up to about $20.
Now given that the Guardian got a Dutch hacker to crack the supposedly impenetrable RFID chip in the new British passports, can't people in theory extract money from your bank account as you walk buy? If they're clever enough, I mean.
i was gonna say that they could only rob you $20 at a time but if they can hack the RFID, they can probably hack the transaction limit too.
Most grocery stores I go to no longer require a signature for transactions under $20. So I guess the novel part of the new cards is not having to swipe them.