Cool UK gadget retailer, Firebox, has begun selling the SmartSwipe, a handy USB device which reads, encrypts and transmits your personal credit card data directly to the online payment page.
Now, there’s a lot of insecurity about these days.
We’re told hackers and crackers and spammers and other enemies of the people are all working hard to undermine our security and get their hands on our credit card details.
SmartSwipe should help beat them at their game. Shoppers just need to swipe their card and click ‘confirm’ usung the onscreen purchase wizard.
Your banking details are then encrypted, you enter a security code and you’re off – the purchase information is encrypted before it even enters your own computer.
This gizmo’s compatible with virtually any website that accepts credit/debit card payments. We think banks should probably supply these to customers for free, but for the present its UK price is £69.99.
How is the data decrypted then? Surely no payment can actually be made if they do not know what the original details are? However, I’d like to see banks issuing these for free.
It sounds like it encrypts the cc information and types it into the credit card number, and maybe expiration fields, which seems to save some typing, but I don’t see the security benefit. The credit card number has be entered in plain text on every shopping website I’ve ever used. Do they really think a hacker is snooping the credit card number between my eyes reading it and my fingers typing it?
Let me preface by saying that I work for the company. I just want to clarify any misconceptions, as a lot of people have a lot of questions about how it works. We use a new process called “Dynamic SSL” to secure the data, that guarantees that it stays secure the whole time. Your card data is never put in plaintext into the browser. If you want to know how it works, you can see an explanation on http://www.dynamic-ssl.com.