Brad Ideas - Internet - Comments

I'm torn. Obviously this

Matthew Newton — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 03:40:59 -0800

I'm torn. Obviously this would mean more working opportunities for those who need it, but then again the weekend is being eroded bit by bit and it irks me.

It seems that the companies don't believe they would generate enough business to compensate for running up their costs so much.

I completely agree with you

Niina — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:53:28 -0800

I completely agree with you Brad. I don't understand why weekend deliveries are not the norm. Retail, Restaurant, and overall entertainment industries work weekends. Why can't the postal service. Jobs are needed now more than ever. There are plenty of people who would kill for the job. Prices for weekend delivery should be the same as every other day as well. Transportation is no way limited on the weekend so there is no excuse for the price increase. This generation needs everything everyday, and as soon as possible, which in most cases, next day. Suppliers better meet demand, or they will fail.

Not a bad idea

brad — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:13:43 -0800

Yes, a big part of the hassle of accounting is having to remember things about transactions much later, so the email stream is a good idea.

At CES today I saw a company that makes “soft” credit cards which have a processor in them that can rewrite the magstripe on demand as well as what is visible on the front. (no rewriting the emboss.) They can let you pick which card number to use, or even generate custom ones. But they are only sold to banks, users can’t get them!

Possible way to do it without bank cooperation

josh — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:03:38 -0800

If you have one of the cards with real time email alerts, you could create a system that would...

receive your email alerts for you on a special address (brad108567@managemycharges.com)
each time a new charge email was received by the service, it would trigger an app on your phone to pop up a window with the details of the charge and give you the chance to add a memo and/or category (or "snooze" the charge and deal with it later)
offer an OFX proxy between you and your bank that would mark-up your transactions with the new memo/category data as you downloaded it into Quicken or whatever you use

Obviously not as good as having the banks do it natively, but still gets you most of the desired functionality without having to wait for them to do it (which might be a very long time).

Again, this is something I've done hackishly for myself with local scripts, but have often thought about making into a public service. The biggest hurdle is not the technology (almost trivial), but trust. Since the service would need to have access to people's real-time transaction data and to their OFX password (sadly, often the same as their password to log in to their bank website), people need to be able to really trust the service.

-josh

Do they check this?

brad — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 07:32:57 -0800

You’re probably right, but I would actually suspect most online merchants today just pass the number to the card processor in real time for verification, they don’t do the check digits themselves. But there may be enough that do it that you have no choice but to pick conformant numbers.

hashing

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:17:34 -0800

Good idea, but you'd have to change two digits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm

A 3rd card number at least for pre-authorized

sl149q — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:02:14 -0800

I have a similar suggestion. Issue a second (or third for two card families) card that would be used only for pre-authorized payments. Then when you loose a card you don't have to run down the list of companies you deal with to figure who was getting paid with that card and then phone with the new number.

Credit card companies are already happy to issue a second card for a spouse. How hard would it be to offer a third good only for pre-authorized transactions.

They get more business. They don't have to reject pre-authorized payments to no longer valid cards. Companies you setup for pre-authorized transactions are happier because they don't have to pay someone to talk to you about the new card number (or perhaps send you a notice via snail mail that your old card no longer works etc.)

It's not about security

J Harrell — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 08:54:05 -0800

It's (usually) not about security, it's about generating hits on their website. Marketing 101 believes that the more a customer interacts with you, the more likely they are to remain a customer or expand the relationship. If they just gave you the info you needed up front, you'd never see their web site at all and there would be no chance to cross-sell you all their other services. Ok, fine - at least give me a direct path to get that statement instead of hiding it under layers upon layers of menus and pages.

Deployment of encrypted mail

brad — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:25:03 -0800

Yes, it is not widely used. It is, however, fairly widely deployed, but few people have created keys.

I believe if the sites that sent all these annoying, “You have an E-mail, why don’t you log in to read it” E-mails instead offered to send encrypted and signed email using s/mime or PGP, with instructions for how to turn that on, I think a lot more people would deploy it.

However, I want something even easier, a box that says, “I use encrypted SMTP on my server, so since you had better use it too, I OK you sending me confidential e-mails to this address.”

This would actually enable a lot of folks. For example, now that gmail is all accessed via https, all users of GMail and similar services could turn on that box. That’s actually quite widely deployed.

Encrypted Email just hasn't made it

John Moore — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 10:12:05 -0800

I agree in general with your complaint, but have a few observations...

As far as I can tell, encrypted email just isn't in wide enough use. I am a long time developer with network and security experience, and I don't use it. None of my correspondents, including one whose profession is network security consulting, use secure email. It is one of those good ideas that hasn't come anywhere close to critical mass.

My flex benefit provider has a partial solution. They send me an encrypted PDF and I have to enter part of my associated debit card number to decrypt it. That seems reasonable.

BTW, another gripe I have is those that don't use enough security. The same outfit that sends me the encrypted PDF requests that I send them back data on medical expenses, but suggest FAX (somewhat secure but unreliable and clunky) or email with NO security.

Finally, another related issue. Lots of sites require that you provide data to use if you forget your password (favorite dog name, high school name, etc). I consider feeding this information to lots of sites to itself be a security hazard, especially when the site security is really not important to me.

...even sillier

josh — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:41:52 -0800

These systems often will often offer to email you a new access password in case you forgot yours, so anyone who can read your email can also get a new password to log into the system and read your waiting protected messages. In these cases, there *no* actual security/convince tradeoff - just 100% annoyance.

With no rational justification, I'd always assumed that there must be some legal reason why they do do this. Maybe by having you log in, they fulfill some requirement to deliver the communication to you that would would not be (at least legally) fulfilled by just blindly sending you the same communication in email?

The Universal Commercial Code has all sorts of rules about the timing of communications. Sometimes it matters when the signer sends it, other times when the receiver receives it- and it changes if the agent is a common carrier (like the US Post Office) or not. Maybe an expert on UCC could weigh in on how these rules apply when email is involved, and if this could be the cause of this behavior?

-josh

bank to bank is growing

brad — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:55:16 -0800

And should grow. And the debit card world is also growing, in response to the credit card 2% grab. It is in fact getting common in some places (not so much in the USA) for merchants to only accept debit cards rather than credit cards, because the fees are much lower. The money comes immediately from your account.

The credit card 2% comes from a long history, but the world has changed. Many stores offered their customers credit and had store cards. These became charge cards (no credit except for the free month) and eventually the credit cards with long term debt appeared. Merchants accepted the charges because it was easier than setting up their own credit cards, and customers liked getting credit. Merchants liked being paid immediately — it was much better for cash flow than waiting for customers who had store accounts to pay their bills, and they liked not having to send bills. The cost was of course borne by the customer eventually.

Today we have electronic transaction systems that can handle the logistics of payment for sub-penny per transaction. The things that justified the credit card no longer exist, except for the desire for credit itself. Many users of credit cards have no desire for credit, we pay our full balance every month. Others want credit, and others are seduced into credit, borrowing when they should not really borrow.

Credit of course costs money, but only a few really need it, and frankly there are other ways we could arrange credit, perhaps on the customer end, and leave the rest of us on a direct payment system which costs pennies per transaction. This would also help the online world sell small things.

2%

Phillip Helbig — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:42:33 -0800

Even if it is 2% everywhere, will someone going for a meal, say, go to a restaurant which doesn't accept credit cards because it is 2% cheaper?

There is a bit of a catch-22 since if a company adopts another, cheaper system, it might have to stop accepting credit cards, thus losing established customers.

Within Europe, especially within the common-currency area (it's complicated: see link below), direct bank-to-bank transfer (which has been around nationally for a long time) is becoming increasingly common, and often it is cheaper than a credit card. Most people in Europe probably use credit cards mainly when travelling outside their home country, since within giro transfer (both in shops and on the web) is cheaper and quicker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Supranational_European_Bodies.png

Who is paying

brad — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 09:35:28 -0800

The reason there is no surcharge for credit card is that normally the credit card companies prohibit it in their contracts. And through an incredible bit of legislation buying, they have managed to pass laws in several areas prohibiting credit card surcharging, except for the government! Some places get around this by offering a “cash discount.”

I think this is crazy, that we pass 2% or more of the retail economy to the credit card industry in order for them to get the chance to pull people into debt and charge far above market interest and penalties. That paypal charges the same, even when you pay from paypal balance, is another crazy legacy of this. People are working on competitors but the cards have an oligopoly right now.

Of course

Phillip Helbig — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:38:55 -0800

"don’t be fooled into thinking the merchant is the one paying"

Of course, ultimately the customer pays everything. Who else should?

However, at least in Europe, there is no surcharge for paying by credit card in a brick-and-mortar shop (there is sometimes on the web, but it is an extra charge and denoted as such so I know the overhead I am paying); in other words, all customers subsidize the credit-card system. Of course, some vendors might think it an advantage not to deal so much with cash.