Fraud Can Flourish Without the Internet

[an5877@anon.penet.fi (deadbeat)]

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The New York Times
Letters
Thursday, September 21, 1995

Fraud Can Flourish Without the Internet

To the Editor:
  Your Sept. 19 front-page article on
the discovery by two University of
California graduate students of a
flaw in Netscape, the software used
for purchases over the Internet's
World Wide Web, raises a number of
obvious questions.
  First, who needs high tech to per-
petrate fraud?  Any unscrupulous
commercial employee could use or
sell your credit card number without
employing technology.
  Every time you hand your card to
a waiter in a restaurant, it disap-
pears for several minutes.  The de-
partment store clerks and gas sta-
tion attendants you deal with also
have access to your card number.
How secure is that?
  Ever give your credit card num-
ber over the phone to make a
purchase from a mail-order house?
Or to secure a reservation at
a hotel?  Who's to say that the em-
ployees you're speaking with are
honest?  Or that your phone is no
tapped?  Or theirs?
  I shop on the Internet; I may get
ripped off.  What's my liability?  Fifty
bucks -- sames as the other scenarios
I've described.  That's in my credit
agreement with the card issuer.
  So why all the hoopla?  Is credit
card fraud significantly more preva-
lent on the Internet than in other
modes of purchasing?
  Or is the banking industry whip-
ping up hysteria among purchasers
to curb fraud losses?  Was the work
of those graduate students funded
by someone -- directly or indirect-
ly?  If so, by whom?  A banking
consortium?  A high-tech company
working on some patentable security
scheme?               ROBERT HERRIG
    Peekskill, N.Y., Sept. 19, 1995
The writer is a systems consultant.


DEADBEAT <na5877@anon.penet.fi>
for the I.L.F.

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