14 DAY TRIAL // People are victims of Internet based fraud daily and this is due to various reasons. But one problem is authentication - when this process is not good enough, accounts will get hacked and people will lose money. You've seen Paypal in the title and you're probably now thinking that they're the only ones with such problems, but you'd be wrong. Better authentication process is something that any web-based firm wants. In any case, Paypal has decided to tackle this issue, as they are one big company and cannot afford client insecurity.
Many people have lost faith in online commerce, and this is easy to understand, if you've read the latest news. Hacker did this, hacker did that, online fraud, phishing, scamming etc etc - these are the hottest Internet news topics nowadays. That's why Paypal decided to improve security - to make users trust e-commerce once again.
As I've read on ComputerWeekly, Paypal is exploring the use of mobile phones and credit cards that generate random numbers to provide a second level of authentication. So, things have not improved yet, but they are going to get better. Another great two-factor authentication method has been employed by the Bank of America - those guys used a random number generator that would send text messages to mobile numbers. A lot more complicated than what Paypal might think of at the moment, but sure sounds a lot more efficient to me.
Paypal is already using this two-factor authentication process, but only in the US, Germany and Australia - and now they want to implement it in the UK, too. I hope they get this everywhere, and fast! The better the authentication method, the less chance to be hacked! I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that in a few years online commerce will be so secure that only the best of the best of hackers will manage to break a system.