Fraud Fraut Froth

[anonymous@freezone.remailer]

NY Times, Sept 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 perpetrate 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
disappears for several minutes. The department store clerks
and gas station attendants you deal with also have access to
your card number. How secure is that?

Ever give your credit card number 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 employees you're speaking
with are honest? Or that your phone is not tapped? Or theirs?

I shop on the Internet; I may get ripped off. What's my
liability? Fifty bucks -- same 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
prevalent on the Internet than in other modes of purchasing?

Or is the banking industry whipping up hysteria among
purchasers to curb fraud losses? Was the work of those
graduate students funded by someone -- directly or indirectly?
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.