Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Paying with your smartphone
A part of Google's new Wallet service has been temporarily suspended. This project is rather ambitious, giving smartphone users the ability to pay for things with their phone rather than having to carry around credit cards. As with all new advancements in web related technology, security is an important issue. Two new hacks have been discovered allowing malicious users to access their victim's funds. This brings up the question of how secure Google Wallet can be. Is paying with your phone any more secure than paying with a piece of plastic? Software is written by humans, and humans are fallible. Thus, software is prone to have vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit for their gain. Regardless of whether you use Google Wallet or not, you need to be careful with any sensitive financial information.
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2 comments:
There can be a reasonable security reached, this technology doesn't have to be avoided. I lived in Tokyo Japan for two years, and a tremendous percentage of the population had some sort of remote-money-transfer device on their cell phones. I'm not sure what kind of software that entailed, but it was apparently secure enough to discourage hackers.
However, you raise a valid point. It's the same issue with almost all security, we build better walls and they find better ways to surpass them.
Someone is always going to exploit the system to make some quick money, no matter whether it's through your phone or a card. Ultimately, I think that phones will be a bit more susceptible than cards, but I'm anxious to see what Google comes up with.
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