Entries Tagged "cars"

Page 15 of 18

Credit Card Gas Limits

Here’s an interesting phenomenon: rising gas costs have pushed up a lot of legitimate transactions to the “anti-fraud” ceiling.

Security is a trade-off, and now the ceiling is annoying more and more legitimate gas purchasers. But to me the real question is: does this ceiling have any actual security purpose?

In general, credit card fraudsters like making gas purchases because the system is automated: no signature is required, and there’s no need to interact with any other person. In fact, buying gas is the most common way a fraudster tests that a recently stolen card is valid. The anti-fraud ceiling doesn’t actually prevent any of this, but limits the amount of money at risk.

But so what? How many perps are actually trying to get more gas than is permitted? Are credit-card-stealing miscreants also swiping cars with enormous gas tanks, or merely filling up the passenger cars they regularly drive? I’d love to know how many times, prior to the run-up in gas prices, a triggered cutoff actually coincided with a subsequent report of a stolen card. And what’s the effect of a ceiling, apart from a gas shut-off? Surely the smart criminals know about smurfing, if they need more gas than the ceiling will allow.

The Visa spokesperson said, “We get more calls, questions, when gas prices increase.” He/she didn’t say: “We make more calls to see if fraud is occurring.” So the only inquiries made may be in the cases where fraud isn’t occurring.

Posted on June 26, 2007 at 1:21 PM • View Comments

License Plate Cloning

It’s a growing problem in the UK:

“There are different levels of cloning. There is the simple cloning, just stealing a plate to drive into say the Congestion Charge zone or evade a speed camera.

“It ranges up to a higher level which is the car criminal who wants to sell on a stolen car.”

Tony Bullock’s car was cloned even though his plates were not physically stolen, and he was threatened with prosecution after “his” car was repeatedly caught speeding in Leicester.

He said: “It was horrendous. You are guilty until you can prove you’re not. It’s the first time that I’ve thought that English law is on its head.”

Metropolitan Police Federation chairman Glen Smyth said the problem has grown because of the amount of camera-based enforcement of traffic offences, which relies on computer records on who owns which car.

Posted on June 11, 2007 at 1:52 PM • View Comments

Volvo's "Heartbeat Sensor"

Here’s a great example of security theater:

The Personal Car Communicator (PCC) is your car key’s smart connection with your Volvo S80 applying the latest in two-way radio technology. When in range, you’ll always know the status of your car. Locked or unlocked. Alarm activated or not. If the alarm has been activated, the heartbeat sensor will also tell you if there is someone inside the car. The PCC also includes keyless entry and keyless drive.

I’ll wager that it will sell, though, because it taps directly into people’s fears.

Does anyone know how it works? Sound? Something else?

Posted on March 20, 2007 at 10:46 AM • View Comments

Cameras Protecting Other Cameras

There is a proposal in Scotland to protect automatic speed-trap cameras from vandals by monitoring them with other cameras.

Then, I suppose we need still other cameras to protect the camera-watching cameras.

I am reminded of a certain building corner in York. Centuries ago it was getting banged up by carts and whatnot, so the owners stuck a post in the ground a couple of feet away from the corner to protect it. Time passed, and the post itself became historically significant. So now there is another post a couple of feet away from the first one to protect it.

When will it end?

Posted on January 31, 2007 at 2:05 PM • View Comments

Tracking Automobiles Through their Tires

Automobile tires are now being outfitted with RFID transmitters:

Schrader Bridgeport is the market leader in direct Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems. Direct TPMS use pressure sensors inside each tire to transmit data to a dashboard display alerting drivers to tire pressure problems.

I’ll bet anything you can track cars with them, just as you can track some joggers by their sneakers.

As I said before, the people who are designing these systems are putting “zero thought into security and privacy issues. Unless we enact some sort of broad law requiring companies to add security into these sorts of systems, companies will continue to produce devices that erode our privacy through new technologies. Not on purpose, not because they’re evil—just because it’s easier to ignore the externality than to worry about it.”

Posted on December 27, 2006 at 7:44 AM • View Comments

UK Car Rentals to Require Fingerprints

Welcome to a surveillance society:

If you want to hire a car at Stansted Airport, you now need to give a fingerprint.

The scheme being tested by Essex police and car hire firms, is not voluntary. Every car rental customer must take part.

No fingerprint, no car hire at Stansted airport.

These are stored by the hire firms—and will be handed over to the police if the car is stolen or used for another crime.

This is the most amusing bit:

“It’s not intrusive really. It’s different—and people need to adjust to it. It’s not Big Brother, it’s about protecting people’s identities. The police will never see these thumbprints unless a crime is committed.”

What are the odds that no crime will ever be committed?

Fingerprints are becoming more common in the UK:

But regardless of any ideological arguments, the use of biometric technology—where someone is identified by a physical characteristic—is already entering the mainstream.

Biometric UK passports were introduced this year, using facial mapping information stored on a microchip, and more than a million have already been issued.

A shop in the Bluewater centre in Kent has used a fingerprint checking scheme to tackle credit card fraud. And in Yeovil, Somerset, fingerprinting has been used to cut town-centre violence, with scanners helping pick out troublemakers.

It’s not just about crime. Biometric recognition is also being pitched as more convenient for shoppers.

Pay By Touch allows customers to settle their supermarket bill with a fingerprint rather than a credit card. With three million customers in the United States, this payment system is now being tested in the UK, in three Co-op supermarkets in Oxfordshire.

Posted on November 14, 2006 at 7:37 AM • View Comments

Please Stop My Car

Residents of Prescott Valley are being invited to register their car if they don’t drive in the middle of the night. Police will then stop those cars if they are on the road at that time, under the assumption that they’re stolen.

The Watch Your Car decal program is a voluntary program whereby vehicle owners enroll their vehicles with the AATA. The vehicle is then entered into a special database, developed and maintained by the AATA, which is directly linked to the Motor Vehicle Division (MVD).

Participants then display the Watch Your Car decals in the front and rear windows of their vehicle. By displaying the decals, vehicle owners convey to law enforcement officials that their vehicle is not usually in use between the hours of 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM, when the majority of thefts occur.

If a police officer witnesses the vehicle in operation between these hours, they have the authority to pull it over and question the driver. With access to the MVD database, the officer will be able to determine if the vehicle has been stolen, or not. The program also allows law enforcement officials to notify the vehicle’s owner immediately upon determination that it is being illegally operated.

This program is entirely optional, but there’s a serious externality. If the police spend time chasing false alarms, they’re not available for other police business. If the town charged car owners a fine for each false alarm, I would have no problems with this program. It doesn’t have to be a large fine, but it has to be enough to offset the cost to the town. It’s no different than police departments charging homeowners for false burglar alarms, when the alarm systems are automatically hooked into the police stations.

Posted on October 16, 2006 at 6:30 AM • View Comments

1 … 13 14 15 16 17 18

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.