Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: David Tamkin Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Phone Credit Cards Message-ID: <3757@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 11 Feb 90 18:39:00 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX Lines: 26 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 93, message 7 of 8 Dave Levenson wrote in <3735@accuvax.nwu.edu> of Volume 10, Issue 91: | Perhaps it is not true today, but less than a year ago when I was | issued a new card, they put it into a machine and handed me a | keyboard, telling me to select and enter a PIN. After I did so, the | machine apparently updated the mag stripe on the card. In any case, | the only external connection to that machine was its power-cord. If | it didn't communicate the PIN to anyplace, it must have written it | on the card (perhaps encrypted, like the password field in /etc/passwd?) I've been through that same procedure. The S&L said that the card would be valid in two to three business days. (My family has several accounts with that institution, and I helped my parents go through the procedure as well, so I did this about three times at the same place.) If the PIN was encoded onto the card, even encrypted, it should have been valid immediately. I got the impression that each days' PIN selections from each branch were uploaded to the institution's database at the end of the day and later the institution batched them and uploaded them to the network's database. David Tamkin P.O Box 813 Rosemont, Illinois 60018-0813 | BIX: dattier dattier@chinet.chi.il.us (708) 518-6769 (312) 693-0591 | GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN No two Chinet users agree about this (or anything else). | CIS: 73720,1570