• froztbyte@awful.systems
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    10 days ago

    you know, here in ZA (and across Africa) services got past the “your phone number is your security layer” thing in the early 10s because we had fraud and related issues way back

    but no, the US is insistent that they have to retread that path and learn those lessons over. can’t go and learn from an african country, that wouldn’t be fitting of an imperial hellhole A First World Country

    why no, I’m not salty about services making me have worse security settings at all, why do you ask…

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      9 days ago

      Yeah security in the USA has always been pretty bad. Iirc it often had to do with monopoly like structures keeping the advances at bay because it costs money to upgrade. Did the bank cards move away from magnetic strips already?

      • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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        9 days ago

        Did the bank cards move away from magnetic strips already?

        Mostly. Half the time the chip will work. Half the time it fails because you inserted it too fast or two slow or because it was Tuesday so it falls back to the magnetic strip.

        Surely this is more secure right? … right?

        • froztbyte@awful.systems
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          9 days ago

          lol god that’s even worse :/

          so have nfc and value-capped transactions even made inroads there yet?

          • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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            9 days ago

            NFC: yes. Most new credit and debit cards have NFC. Can tap to pay at pretty much any retail store and some smaller businesses. There are still weirdly many phone models without NFC (especially lower end), but the situation is slowly improving.

            Value-capped transactions: not really a thing if I understand right.

            • self@awful.systems
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              9 days ago

              it’s embarrassing as fuck though when NFC’s either broken at the terminal or really finicky, so you have to get the cashier to slowly, painfully re-request the payment twice before giving up and seeing if your chip still works

              or you’re at Walmart or CVS and they intentionally disabled it in all their stores for asshole reasons

              even more embarrassing: I accidentally call it NFT and the cashier knows what that is and thinks I’m a fucking idiot

              • froztbyte@awful.systems
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                9 days ago

                “have you got tap?” / “can i tap?” is a common local verbiage here

                (also “got snapscan?” but that’s more popular in some cities than others, depending how much inroads snapscan has made)

                (we also still have a fairly healthy cash market)

                • self@awful.systems
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                  9 days ago

                  see I’m slowly shifting my vocabulary to tap unless I’m DIYing an NFC sticker into a project, but sometimes my cursed engineering brain takes over

                  maybe both should be tap. maybe it’s all tap. REST calls are now taps.

      • froztbyte@awful.systems
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        9 days ago

        they ever so very slowly started doing chip (not necessarily with PIN) from 4~6y ago, state depending

        probably need to give them another decade.

    • Alphane Moon@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 days ago

      You’d be surprised, but many countries with much lower GDP/capita have far more developed/sophisticated ICT services than the US, not to mention far more competition.

      This is not just my personal view, I’ve had Americans (who have travelled the world) mention this as well.

      • froztbyte@awful.systems
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        10 days ago

        You’d be surprised

        I wouldn’t be :) have visited many of them, and worked in a fair couple too

        what was shocking (on my first visit there) is how absolutely fucking antiquated US infra is across multiple dimensions. not shocking these days, I now understand so many of the reasons for it

        that understanding also makes so much of what comes out of the US (and its weird obsessions with specific non-solutions) make a lot more sense

    • BasiqueEvangelist@mstdn.social
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      9 days ago

      @froztbyte oh I absolutely hate using SMS for authentication
      I had to do some eGovernment-related stuff recently and I think I had to wait for and type in an SMS one-time-code like 8 times until I got what I wanted

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      can’t go and learn from an african country, that wouldn’t be fitting of an imperial hellhole A First World Country

      A spring day can be colder than an autumn day. And for which parts of the world it’s autumn and for which it’s spring, you guess.

      That

      your phone number is your security layer

      is because people deciding on security are interested in firm connections between accounts and people.

      It’s an environment where surveillance is companies’ incentive for profit, and so on, you’ve surely read about all that.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Guys, this was a compliment to African countries becoming better while the West sinks lower, why are all the downvotes?

        • froztbyte@awful.systems
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          9 days ago

          probably because the vagueposting in the top half of your comment wasn’t actually clearly stating what it meant, and the latter half suffers from internet-stalking-horse incorrect conclusionism

          just a guess tho.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            Well, both your guesses are subjective, especially the “incorrect” part ; should probably keep them in that dark stinky place you keep your pride

            • self@awful.systems
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              9 days ago

              congrats on subjectively being an utter shithead to an African while supposedly complementing African countries in your trainwreck of a post

              fuck off now