Credit the smart movers
IN MY pocket right now I’m carrying what Professor Hannah Fry calls “a marvel of human ingenuity”.Before you assume the obvious, it isn’t my phone. Nor is it my zappy car key, my dog’s poo-bag dispenser (which, frankly, is more trouble than it’s worth), nor one of those little plastic boxes you get Tic Tac mints in.
No, the marvel to which I refer (sorry if this comes as a bit of a letdown) is the debit card in my wallet.And indeed the credit card beside it. So, yes, I actually carry two marvels. I dare say you carry a number of your own.
Hark at us, eh, all matter-of-factly modern and high tech. Starting tonight on BBC Two, Hannah’s new series THE SECRET GENIUS OF MODERN LIFE (8pm) begins with a look at how these little pieces of pocketable plastic have come to be integral to our lives.
Beginning in late-50s America – where this radical new payment method was introduced by what we now know asVisa – Hannah traces the credit card’s evolution, decade by decade, via the ever more rigid security measures the banks have put in place.
Since more or less day one, rogues, cads and rotters (rotters in particular; they’re the worst) have looked for flaws in that security.
In the early days, they didn’t have to look very hard.
One of the interviewees is a reformed fraudster, who explains why cloning credit cards used to be such a doddle, back when it was just a case of copying the personal data embedded in the magnetic strip on the back.
And, yes, he clearly did quite well out of it, this man.Well, apart from the jail sentence.
Since then, of course, we have had further innovations, such as chip-and-pin and contactless.
Chip-and-pin as we know it evolved from the smartcard, dreamed up by an ingenious Frenchman, Roland Moreno.
That’s why the French were years ahead of us in introducing it, just as they’ve been, to be fair to them, in other areas of human advancement, such as shrugging.
But fraudsters will never give up looking for ways to steal our money.
It’s what gets them out of bed in the morning. So the technology will continue to evolve. Before long, Hannah learns, biometrics will be the norm, identifying us via voice, fingerprint or face.
Hannah meets a pair of boffins at the forefront of all that. She also asks them a not unreasonable question about the facial recognition thing.
Namely: “What if I broke my nose?”
The boffin insists the machines will still know it’s her, even if her appearance changes.
“You could wear make-up,” he assures her, “or grow a beard…”
“What if I broke yours?” she must be tempted to reply.