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Technology Stocks : PC Sector Round Table -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gottfried who wrote (905)	9/23/1998 9:26:00 PM
From: LK2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2025

GM, you're right, the smart card is a solution in search of a problem. The manufacturers (current and potential) are looking for a way to make money off the idea. The idea (smartcards) has been around for at least a few years, but it doesn't seem to have caught on big yet in the US. I remember reading a couple of years ago that in Europe, the smartcard was being used much more than in the US, as a way to make payments (sort of like a credit card or an ATM card, except that the money/credit recorded on the card was tied to the card itself, instead of being tied to an individual's checking account/whatever. In other words, the card itself was a cash-equivalent, having a certain amount of buying power because the individual who owned it had alreay paid for that amount of money/credit/whatever. So using the smartcard for personal identification is just another possible way to use the smartcard. Regards, Larry

To: Gottfried who wrote (905)	9/24/1998 2:04:00 AM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2025

<Mark, if was still working and my employer required me to insert a smart card before I could use the office PC, guess where I'd keep the card? Right! In an open desk drawer.> Hopefully you don't leave your finger in the drawer also. This was taken from the article. Regards, Mark Here's how it works: Users place the card in the reader and a finger on a silicon chip on the card. The chip will take a 300-point snapshot of the fingerprint and permanently store it in that card. From that point, the card won't activate unless it receives that image. The card also stores a private key that is used in public-key exchanges with servers to add another layer of user authentication and encryption.