Wed, 02 Sep 2009
Verified by Visa - Designed by idiots
The one thing online that irks me beyond all others, even surpassing
chromatic, is Verified by Visa. I hate this service and every site that
uses it.
If you've been blessed enough to never have it ruin your transaction here's the short version - in the middle of paying for something you get bounced, with no clue where you're going and how secure it is, to a third party site, which is completely safe as it's run by visa, that then gets you to enter a password. Or if you don't know it, create a new one using nothing more than what's on your card.
Firstly how stupid is that? What ever happened to something I know,
something I have? If I find a lost card I can reset the Verified by Visa
password using nothing more than my powers of reading and typing. While
we're on the subject of passwords - you're not allowed to use special
characters. Numbers and letters only. Thanks, rule out half the
possibilities in one sweep for me. And what's with the remembering history?
This thing makes elephants look like /tmp... it remembered all
the verified passwords I've ever used going back about ten iterations - and
O change the password a lot because I can't use a decent one and it's
easier to reset it than to dig out the old one.
Now suppose you've logged in, got the password right and clicked next, what happens? You get a session / transaction timeout and you have to go all the way back through your order. Thanks for that.
If your site makes me jump through these fake security hoops then I'll go elsewhere. I won't play along anymore - you'll just lose my custom. And hopefully that of many other people.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2009/09/02 22:07 | /misctech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
Copyright © 2000-2010 Dean Wilson
