[ news_security_news ]
PayPal's Security Key
Nathan Weinberg
Contributing Writer
2007-01-11
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Infoworld reports that PayPal, long a favored target of phishers and email spam, has come up with a measure designed to better protect its customers.
Link: Infoworld reports
For $5, any PayPal customer can order a little security keychain that displays a new password every 30 seconds. When logging into their accounts, those users would have to enter their regular passwords, then look on their keychain and enter the current password from there, too.
It's a great idea, and one that's been discussed and implemented on a smaller scale before. I'm glad to see PayPal, which is easilly in the top 5 of all phishing scam targets, take a stand at protecting their customers. Still, five dollars is a barrier to adoption, and if PayPal's users were interested in protecting themselves, they would have educated themselves, for free, on how to identify a scam (just because a logo is in an email, doesn't mean it's real!). I would suggest PayPal figure out how much money it makes off a customer, and start giving these out for free to anyone who's a big revenue generator.
Considering how much information we now put in our Google Accounts, from credit card numbers in Google Checkout, to our email, schedules, im conversations, search history, search cache (in desktop search), and many other pieces of information scammers might want their hands on, maybe Google would like to offer this sort of thing to their users? I'd probably buy a Google security keychain, if only for the geek points.
(via Neowin)
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About the Author:
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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