Gratuitous Technology

Interesting article. While I don't have to surrender my credit card to a person "who disappears," am I not more subject to identity theft by someone simply monitoring the radio signals between the table-top unit and the central unit? This is happening in stores where cash registers communicate via radio instead of wire. Users (typically, department stores) are enabling in most cases only the most basic forms of encryption, which can be cracked very quickly. Mr Dokoupil, please tell us about security with the credit-card units.

I was a victim of skimming in 2006, and I do believe that TablePay devices will become a standard nationwide. (My story is on page 124 of the January Readers Digest) As a result of what happened to me, I started my own business selling TablePay systems (www.noskimmers.com).