Swiping left on magnetic stripes • Hacker News Board

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#281

Post by cbm-vic-20 » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #217

Animats wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s the bottleneck? Gas stations. The gas station industry has been avoiding upgrading pumps. It's expensive. Retail checkouts usually just need a replacement of the desktop unit, but gas pumps require actual modification. They got a 3-year delay, until October 2020. Then April 17, 2021. Then they got hit by the coronavirus epidemic. The upgrade has to be done by a qualified installer; you don't want someone who…

Gas stations also have a disincentive to have you pay at the pump. They want you to walk in and buy from the mini-market, at least here in Australia the petrol was a loss-leader for a long time. They made all their money from the in store mini-market. All petrol stations here are essentially convenience stores with a gas station attached to get you in the door. We have had pay at the pump before, but they got rid of…

This should be a good incentive for "gas stations" to set up and maintain SAE CCS DC Fast charging for electric vehicles. Put a couple of small tables and a cafe, and people would stick around for the 30 minutes to get a good charge.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#282

Post by deelowe » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

yarcob wrote: post #231

If you want to do it faster, you need government regulation. Magnetic stripes have been phased out in the EU for a couple of years. And additionally online card payments all require 2FA in EU. As a result, there's barely any credit card fraud in Europe. You can't expect the industry to invest in infrastructure if dealing with fraud is cheaper in the short term. You need to force them.

Government regulation is what's pushing it already. Credit card companies are liable for fraud. Mag stripe has become extremely insecure now that just about anyone can build a reader. So the CC companies are moving to chip and rfid based systems.

The bad news is that these new systems are considered so secure that the CC companies have much more limited liability. So that's likely to be a problem eventually.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#283

Post by deelowe » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

aimor wrote: post #181

This might sound like a stretch, but I wish I could just pay without having my phone or card or cash or anything else on me. In general I'm growing weary of authentication hell, but specifically with how it all seems to come back to requiring my phone. I really wouldn't mind just keying in my account number and pin to make a payment, but of course that's just username + password and I suppose unacceptably risky. The…

> The solution I expect is for Amazon to recognized my face and bill me.

I'm just going to go live in the woods. We grown way too comfortable as a society.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#284

Post by rutthenut » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

iarenaza wrote: post #262

rutthenut wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! Average 57 mpg in Europe - really? Even for diesels, that sounds extremely optimistic; is that from manufacturer-supplied figures? US gallons happen to be smaller too, fwiw

Well, my 7 years old Mercedes A 180 CDI 2012 model (Diesel engine) averages 53 mpg (4.4 l/100Km) still today (see my old comment with all the details for the these numbers at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14552816 ). The manufacturer-supplied official numbers are even better (3.3 to 3.6 l/100Km, or about 65 to 71 mpg). NB: the above mpg numbers are computed using US gallons (3.785 litres)

Useful economy figures, for sure. It's the average across Europe that I'd find really surprising, given how many older vehicles there will be, and not all diesels

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#285

Post by avnigo » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:51 PM UTC

> The arrival of the magnetic stripe changed all that [...] offering more security...

Is this what we'd call security through obscurity? I was under the impression that data on magnetic stripe was not encrypted.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#286

Post by avnigo » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

aimor wrote: post #181

This might sound like a stretch, but I wish I could just pay without having my phone or card or cash or anything else on me. In general I'm growing weary of authentication hell, but specifically with how it all seems to come back to requiring my phone. I really wouldn't mind just keying in my account number and pin to make a payment, but of course that's just username + password and I suppose unacceptably risky. The…

Amazon wants to scan your palm.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/02/amazon-credit-palm-biometr...

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#287

Post by throwaheyy » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #65

aidenn0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA is a big holdup. I just traveled across the country and there are still filling (petrol) stations where the only card reader is stripe. See also other comments about the stripe being a fallback for chip as chip readers on POS terminals seem to be more fragile than magnetic stripe readers. FWIW, Contactless is very hit-or-miss for me in the US; about 1/3 the time it just doesn't work at all (even with multiple…

Yea, the Achilles Heel of contactless (or phone/NFC) in the USA is the uncertainty that it's supported and the terrible UX for failure cases. How many times have you had this happen? Your groceries are all rung up and the POS terminal is waiting. You dig out your phone or contactless card and try to invoke the contactless payment system. Nothing's happening. You wave it around a little. Still nothing. Grocery cashier…

I live in US, use contactless everywhere, and never have this trouble. But I just look for the (standard?) design pattern that indicates contactless is enabled - either text on a screen saying ”… or tap”, or the row of 4 blue LEDs across the top of the reader.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#288

Post by kook_throwaway » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

jacobr wrote: post #251

kook_throwaway wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Installing gas station spyware sounds to fill up sounds like hell.

It only knows your location when you open the app, why is that a problem?

I assume they will require an account of some sort, and their DB will inevitably be breached to leak it who knows where. It knows more about me than my location. Probably. I don't know what all the proprietary software running on my portable sensor suite does or knows.

And almost without fail corporate one-off apps are bloated piles of contracted out and barely maintained garbage taking up too much space when a couple of forms and a few Mb of graphics/logos would do. Lastly very few actually work well or reliably, logging me out after needless updates seems to be a common pattern.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#289

Post by mikecoles » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #212

Animats wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s the bottleneck? Gas stations. The gas station industry has been avoiding upgrading pumps. It's expensive. Retail checkouts usually just need a replacement of the desktop unit, but gas pumps require actual modification. They got a 3-year delay, until October 2020. Then April 17, 2021. Then they got hit by the coronavirus epidemic. The upgrade has to be done by a qualified installer; you don't want someone who…

Also some retail places. Home Depot is a huge retailer in the USA, but they will not accept contactless payments. I assume it has something to do with having to pay a higher percent per transaction.

Wormhole attack? Not sure if this is still a possibility though as distance base timeouts could be employed.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.10623.pdf

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#290

Post by bellyfullofbac » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #272

ehnto wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas stations also have a disincentive to have you pay at the pump. They want you to walk in and buy from the mini-market, at least here in Australia the petrol was a loss-leader for a long time. They made all their money from the in store mini-market. All petrol stations here are essentially convenience stores with a gas station attached to get you in the door. We have had pay at the pump before, but they got rid of…

A lot of gas stations now have a screen on the pump that plays ads at you to make up for the fact that you're not coming in. Fortunately there's a mute button and it usually works.

I wonder why there isn't a "Buy now" button, they're already charging your credit card, they'd just need to hire someone to run the item from inside the store to you at your car. Add some sensors like body temperature monitoring; Sweating person who looks like they like their sweets? "5% off this ice cream if you hit 'Buy!' within the next 30 seconds!".

Damn, I think this is an idea. At least for developing countries, were labor is cheap, the runner is the expensive part of this concept.