"Chip and pin" was introduced almost a year ago on the 14th of February 2006 and in an instant we had to remember our card pin numbers in addition to all the other password and phone numbers that have infiltrated our busy lives. It replaced the traditional system of signing your credit/debit card receipts and was hailed as the an emense advance in preventing card fraud. However, it is not the new invention which banks and large corporations portrayed it as. It has infact been the norm in New Zealand, France, Holland and Canada for several years. Needlesstosay, chip and pin was not accepted wtih universal enthusiasm. Many smaller companies elected to remain with the old system and within weeks a proportion of companies, particularly petrol stations, were rejecting chip and pin altogether. 

I freely admit that the signature system was not perfect. If a school child can fake his mother's handwriting on a note for his teacher then these skills can advance quite easily to copy a signature. I thought that my bank had really found the next, if rather obvious, step in fraud prevention when they furnishsed my card wtih a rather unflattering photo of my torso. It would take a considerably determined with criminal to style their hair into that unfortunate bob and the amount of money in my account was hardly likely to cover the distress. In comparison, chip and pin simply seemed to make the process easier. 

I admit that unlike a signature, pin numbers are not printed on your card, unless you are the forgetfull sort. But, at a mere four numbers long, it does not require a mensa candidate to watch as you type frantically at a busy supermarket terminal and remember a string of numbers which is less than quarter of a telephone number. "Shoulder surfing" as it is aptly named is the process by which criminals gather pin numbers by watching as you type. They can gather a large selection of numbers ready for when they, or more often their accoumplice, acquire your card from your purse. But pin aquisition does not need to be nearly so archeic. An aptly positioned security camera can be a security disaster if in the wrong hands. 

Then there is the problem of the machines and encoding systems themselves. I have to admit to being the paranoid type who always watched dodgey take out owners shrewedly after I handed over my credit card. But now my card number and my pin are both wafting through the ether of the comunications highway ready to be snapped up by the awaiting fraudster. The chip and pin system has done nothing to stop card cloning. There is also the added concern of wireless machines which waitressess carry to your table in fancy restraurants. My wireless PDA easily leaches internet signals as I roam around the city. So what is to stop a clever, technologically minded criminal picking up transmissions from these machines, decoding them and draining my account? Remeber, in the technical world nothing is impossible. Encriptions can always be hacked. Indeed Proessor Wang Xiaoyun of Beijing's Tsignhua University and Shandong University of Technology proved this when she solved SHA-1, her fifth ecription scehem in 10 years. 

So what will be the next technical "advance" that we attempt to employ to cease the tide of card fraud? Fingerprints? Retina scans? Biometric passports? Universal RFID tagging? Surely the authorities have guessed by now that what ever step we take criminals will be ones step ahead with the solution in James Bond and Mission Impossible style. Where there is a will there is a way, and the will of the criminal mind is unsupprisingly determined.