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What's the deal with 'security code'?

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AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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04 Jan 2011, 6:31 pm

When I signed in just now, in addition to my password, our site asked me to retype a numerical 'security code.'

Have we been having problems?



Amik
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04 Jan 2011, 6:48 pm

I saw it too when I logged in. I don't know if there have been problems. I was happy to see though that at least this code is easy to read. 90% of the times I bump into such security codes on websites I can't for the life of me read them and enter them correctly because they are so distorted.



tweety_fan
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04 Jan 2011, 7:46 pm

I saw that as well. Don't know what it is there for.



CarbonBasedLifeform
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04 Jan 2011, 8:09 pm

Most like to stop spam -- spammers make bots that automatically register accounts and then post spam (or pm spam to people to make it less obvious)



ruveyn
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04 Jan 2011, 9:15 pm

AardvarkGoodSwimmer wrote:
When I signed in just now, in addition to my password, our site asked me to retype a numerical 'security code.'

Have we been having problems?


No. It is an additional precaution. The only way to know the security code (at least at first) is to read it off the physical credit card. The only way a non-authorized person can do that is if he has the card in hand. Of course once the security code is revealed to a vendor it can be passed on to a hostile party.

The trick is to get an anonymous card good for one transaction (from an issuing bank) or use Pay Pal.

ruveyn



Idiotchief
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04 Jan 2011, 9:41 pm

Here's hoping for less spam because of this.


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superboyian
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05 Jan 2011, 12:36 pm

I like the idea but what if someone like myself could be dyscalculia and I sometimes get numbers mixed up?


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AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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05 Jan 2011, 3:09 pm

CarbonBasedLifeform wrote:
Most like to stop spam -- spammers make bots that automatically register accounts and then post spam (or pm spam to people to make it less obvious)

I have not noticed much public spam. I have received a couple of pm's purported from a woman interested in meeting me. It just did not seem right.

We can probably expect some spam, and eventual asking for money, because we aspies are reputed to be so 'naive.' Except we're not! I myself have patchy social skills, strong in some areas, still learning in others.



Asp-Z
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05 Jan 2011, 3:48 pm

ruveyn wrote:
AardvarkGoodSwimmer wrote:
When I signed in just now, in addition to my password, our site asked me to retype a numerical 'security code.'

Have we been having problems?


No. It is an additional precaution. The only way to know the security code (at least at first) is to read it off the physical credit card. The only way a non-authorized person can do that is if he has the card in hand. Of course once the security code is revealed to a vendor it can be passed on to a hostile party.

The trick is to get an anonymous card good for one transaction (from an issuing bank) or use Pay Pal.

ruveyn


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AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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05 Jan 2011, 4:14 pm

superboyian wrote:
I like the idea but what if someone like myself could be dyscalculia and I sometimes get numbers mixed up?

That's why we've got to be multi-path, not just single path. For example, 'HERE FOR A DIFFERENT QUESTION' (what I'd prefer, but I don't think that's what we're currently doing, that's okay, it's all a work in progress). Then the question might ask, click the box that contains a billiard ball, easy for a human to tell a billiard ball from a baseball or soccer ball, hard for a computer. Until a crafty programmer games the system. And this is a reason it's good to keep changing, that a dynamic system is harder to beat than a static system.