Steve Forrette <STEVEF%WALKER_RICHER_QUINN@mcimail.com> (12/29/89)
I just got a mailing from US Sprint today announcing their combined FON card/ Visa card. It has a picture of it - one card that is a Visa as well as a calling card. More pictures show a woman using it at a clothing store to buy stuff, and another showing a man using it at a payphone and touch-toning the number. The brochure says the one number on the card does it all. I though that I MUST be missing something, so I called Sprint customer (dis)service to find out what the scoop was. They said that as far as they knew, the brochure was right - one number does it all. I asked them how they planned to provide security if every merchant and their employees where I shopped knew my calling card number. They said it was secure; since the back of the card is not copied onto the carbon, they would not know the dialing instructions! I mentioned that I'm sure that someone posing as a customer would have no problem getting that information from their operators or customer service people. The response was that they don't give out dialing instructions to just *anyone*. They verify name and address first. I know that I'm going to sleep well with them looking after my account so diligently. Perhaps they figure that the 2% or whatever they're going to pocket off of the purchases will cover the fraud losses. Sounds pretty stupid to me. Any thoughts?
"John R. Levine" <johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> (12/30/89)
In article <2458@accuvax.nwu.edu> you write: >I just got a mailing from US Sprint today announcing their combined >FON card/ Visa card. It has a picture of it - one card that is a Visa >as well as a calling card. [The fraud possibilities are great.] >Sounds pretty stupid to me. Any thoughts? There exist COCOTs now that let you enter a Visa card number from the keypad, so I don't see that the increased fraud possitilities are all that great. If they have trouble, a straightforward possibility would be to reqire the Visa card's PIN, the one that you use to to get a cash advance from an ATM, for phone calls. There are also at most airports phones that will accept any common credit card and charge calls to that card using any of the usual LD carriers including Sprint. The card number is send as a long string of DTMF digits which you can hear while waiting for the call to start ringing; for all I know you could dial the same thing from any other phone and charge Sprint calls to your Visa card now. Regards, John Levine, johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|lotus}!esegue!johnl
David Dyer-Bennet <ddb@ns.network.com> (12/30/89)
In article <2458@accuvax.nwu.edu> STEVEF%WALKER_RICHER_QUINN@mcimail.com (Steve Forrette) writes: :X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 599, message 3 of 9 :I asked them how they planned to provide security if every merchant :and their employees where I shopped knew my calling card number. :Perhaps they figure that the 2% or whatever they're going to pocket :off of the purchases will cover the fraud losses. Sounds pretty :stupid to me. Any thoughts? The merchant knows my credit card number anyway; that's worth a lot more in possible fraud than my fon card number. And by going to the right places, prarticularly airports, they can make phone calls with my credit card number anyway. Frankly I don't see a significantly increased exposure here. David Dyer-Bennet, ddb@terrabit.fidonet.org or ddb@network.com or Fidonet 1:282/341.0, (612) 721-8967 9600hst/2400/1200/300 or terrabit!ddb@Lynx.MN.Org, ...{amdahl,hpda}!bungia!viper!terrabit!ddb