From: futplex@pseudonym.com (Futplex)
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 95 07:40:46 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Subject: USA Today on Fear of Credit Cards over Net
Message-ID: <9509201440.AA28932@cs.umass.edu>
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USA Today reports in its 9/20/95 edition, on the front of the Money section,
that "Few Feel Safe Making On-Line Transactions". A survey of 427 "computer
users" by USA Today and Intelliquest yielded the results below. 

[The article doesn't say whether the survey was conducted before or after 
news of the bad seeds hit. <sigh>. I only bought USA Today because my best 
friend gets her 15 minutes of fame below the fold on page 7D of the Life 
section today.]

I'm not sure exactly what "sending a credit-card number to a commercial on-
line service" means. Apparently it's seen as slightly safer than phoning it
in, but much riskier than snail-mailing it in to an ISP. 

	How much do PC users trust:

	Automatic teller machines	77%
	Banking by phone		62%
	Banking by computer		57%
	Using a credit card or calling 
	card at a public phone		57%
	Writing a credit-card number on
	a catalog order form		43%
	Sending a credit-card number to
	a commercial on-line service	34%
	Giving a credit-card number
	over the phone			31%
	Sending a credit-card number
	over the Internet		 5%

	(margin of error = +/- 4.7%)

Raph also gets mentioned, mainly for "human interest" I'm afraid :/

	Even those familiar with the Internet do not routinely use it for
	financial transactions. Raph Levien -- a computer science Ph.D.
	candidate reached via Internet -- says he has only used his credit
	card once over the Internet. About a year ago, he bought three CDs:
	Best of Alan Parsons Project, Enya and Beethoven's Ninth. Levien is
	a member of the group cypherpunks, which announced on-line Sunday
	night that hackers found the security flaw in Netscape's software.
	Still, Levien says Netscape's system "is among the safest that
	there is."

-Futplex <futplex@pseudonym.com>