🚀 go-pugleaf

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.

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.