🚀 go-pugleaf

On 23/01/2011 8:56 PM, Brad wrote:
> On Jan 23, 7:06 pm, Sylvia Else<syl...@not.here.invalid>  wrote:
>> On 23/01/2011 5:54 PM, Sunny wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> "Sylvia Else"<syl...@not.here.invalid>    wrote in message
>>> news:8q1ta4F96iU1@mid.individual.net...
>>>> On 23/01/2011 4:34 PM, Sunny wrote:
>>>>> "Sylvia Else"<syl...@not.here.invalid>     wrote in message
>>>>> news:8q1nmpF9coU1@mid.individual.net...
>>>>>> On 20/01/2011 12:59 PM, Aussie Bob wrote:
>>>>>>> What does everytone think of this idea? Using your mobile to pay for
>>>>>>> coffee at Starbucks (yecch!)
>>
>>>>>>> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/starbucks-stop-here-...
>>
>>>>>>> "US coffee chain Starbucks has started allowing customers in its US
>>>>>>> stores to keep their cash and credit cards in their wallets and pay
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> their drinks with mobile phones."
>>
>>>>>>> But I don't see how it would work if you're on a cap plan. Say I've
>>>>>>> got
>>>>>>> a $400 cap, does that mean I can get $400 worth of coffee each month
>>>>>>> instead?
>>
>>>>>> I'd have to wonder how secure they've made it. It could be done
>>>>>> properly, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were possible to get
>>>>>> coffee
>>>>>> at someone else's expense.
>>
>>>>>> Sylvia.
>>
>>>>> The machine records the phone number of the mobile, and the bill is
>>>>> forwarded to the phone plan provider
>>
>>>> The article implies that a code is read of the screen. The question
>>>> whether that code is constructed in a way that means that it cannot be
>>>> faked, nor reused.
>>
>>>> Sylvia.
>>
>>> There are several Mobile Phone "pay for goods" systems.
>>> A popular Japanese one is billed through the phone provider, the Starbucks
>>> one seems to be an electronic "store credit card" and would have a unique
>>> number, same as a normal store credit card.
>>> e.g.  Myers, Woolworth's etc.
>>> (problem could occur if you wandered too close to a scanner though :-)
>>
>> The difference is that a store credit card requires a signature. What
>> I'm thinking is that one could contrive to record the image displayed on
>> the screen of someone's mobile phone while they're using it to buy
>> coffee, and then duplicate that image on one's own phone, so as to buy
>> coffee from the other person's account.
>>
>> There are ways of preventing that from working, but the question is,
>> have those ways been used. The person tasked with implementing this may
>> not have had security high on their mind.
>>
>> Sylvia.
>
> In the USA it is possible to have boarding passes with the large
> square 'barcode' sent to your iPhone. The airlines consider the system
> secure enough for a paranoid society to find acceptable.

It would hardly be practical to forge such codes, because they'd have to 
match bookings, and ultimately match people boarding aircraft. A forged 
code would either be bounced as invalid, or if it happened to match a 
genuinely allocated code the act of forgery would be flagged when two 
people attempted to check in for the same booking. The only way it could 
work for the forger was if they invented a valid code, and the proper 
holder was a no-show.

None of that applies to cups of coffee.

>
> Buying a cup of coffee could operate on the same sort of operation,
> allowing the phone to have the barcode but the account to be on the
> coffeehouse's server. Forging a cup of coffee would be a next to
> useless exercise.

Depends how easy it is, and how much one likes coffee.

Sylvia.