Saturday Photo Fun?

Last saturday, the batch had its photo taken for the yearbook. Judging from the photos posted on facebook, it looks like i missed out on a fun activity. Class schedules are as many as there are students now, so blockmates don't see each other so much anymore. It was thus inevitable that blockmates were excited to see each other. But last night, i learned that the pictorials wasn't all that fun for everyone. A friend of mine lost his bag in between photo shoots. Luckily for him, his house keys were on him. Unfortunately, his laptop and wallet with all sorts of IDs and cards, including ATM cards were in his bag. He found out from the bank that not 30 minutes from the time he last saw his bag, several withdrawals had already occured. The wierd thing is that the first withdrawal was in Alabang, about 15 minutes after the bag went missing. The even wierder thing is that in all the transactions, there was never an error in entering the pin.

My instant thoughts were (1) if there's a machine that allows you to input a password, there's another one that can extract it; (2) since you inputed something, it was stored somewhere, available for someone/thing to read, whether or not authorized; (3) if there's a machine that can put a set of data in your card, that machine or something like it can do it again, on a different card; and (4) thanks to the SLEX, Alabang is really not so far anymore, given the proper traffic conditions or a maniacal driver.

My husband and i discussed this and we both agreed that it was a good thing that we empty out our ATMs regularly. But what does this say about the security of bank information with the internet in place. The internet, is, per se, neutral. It just so happens to be intrinsically open. I mean, it's not the bad element that made my friend lose a huge amount of money. What makes banking scary is the people who use the facilities of the internet and digital information to earn their dishonest living.