Smartphones Are Turning into Wireless Wallets Discussion

[Jacqueline Emigh]

An emerging wireless standard called Near Field Communications (NFC) could allow us to someday use our smartphones like credit cards. But rival technologies and security concerns might prevent this from happening.

Read the full content of this Article: Smartphones Are Turning into Wireless Wallets

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[infael]

This sounds like a good idea, mainly because losing your wallet means anyone can use whatever's in your wallet, whereas a smartphone can (read: should) be strong-password protected, and can be found electronically.

My concern would be with the wireless part. RFID/wireless waves could be sucked out of the air by a hacker who then has the leisure of trying to break the encryption. Even RFID-proof wallets aren't 100% as one still needs to send wireless signals to the terminal.

[r0k]

Wallets were mobile before smartphones came along. A better title for the article would be "Smartphones are turning into wallets." I have photos of drivers license, passport, etc on my iPhone. Too bad the airport folks won't accept them to let me board.

[infael]

r0k, drivers licenses (at this time) have no tech for throwing info out in the wide-open air.

For airports, it's more a matter of lack of knowledge. Most likely security has no info re licenses on a phone. It's a matter of research into the ability for forging, falsifying, etc, before acceptance.