Sunday, December 30, 2007

Ulster Bank - Anytime online banking - what use for their card reader?

A few months ago, the Ulster Bank mailed out card readers to users of their Anytime online banking service.

Until then, all you needed to access your account online was the account number, a 4-digit PIN and a password - three things I could carry around in my head.

An as-yet redundant Ulster Bank card reader!

But then they issued a card reader, that you slot your cheque guarantee/debit card into that can generate a one-time code once you've entered your card's PIN number. That's two physical things I now need to carry around if I want to access online banking when I'm away from home.

Except that having posted out the dinky blue card readers - at least three months ago - the Ulster Bank have yet to turn the service on! So the old account/PIN/password security must be good enough after all. Wonder how much the exercise cost them? And why the delay?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i think you need the card reader to setup or change direct debits/standing orders etc

I dont think the plan was to require it for basic login.

Anonymous said...

Mmmmm, interesting. It looks like a pocket calculator. Don't know that I'd be too keen carrying that around with me...
I'm with an internet bank; they haven't, yet, introduced card-readers.
In practice I've found that all my banking transactions can be done from home, except getting cash. I can't remember the last time I was in a bank.

Anonymous said...

I think this is a bit silly, because now all anyone has to do is connect up the card reader and then "read" the ROM, and they will now just have to reverse engineer this (easliy done) and they will now be able to clone cards much more easily