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Re: [tlug] OT: Japans digitilization




Hi Chris,


On 28/9/2020 12:44 pm, Christian Horn wrote:
On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 08:04:26PM +0800, Raymond Wan wrote:
[..]
Here (sorry, you opened a can of worms about the things here that irk
me), they forced us to use 2FA for banking.  Then, they had this
brilliant idea to merge it with our phones for "convenience".
Really...I think they just wanted to not pay for a 2FA token device,
even though I'm happy to pay for it...  So, previously, I can leave
the hardware token safely locked at home.  But now, one has to carry
it around.  Imagine the stress of losing one's phone!

Reminds me of my German bank, who tries to persuade customers into
mobile-tan, so sending a SMS for verification to you phone.  Just that
they only accept German phone numbers for that.

For 2FA, they also offer what they call chipTAN, which is quite nice:
you have a small device which has 7 brightness sensors, and insert your
banking card into the device.
The bank website is then displaying an animated gif on the screen, as
you hover that animation with the device, informations about for
example a planned transaction are transferred into the device.  The
device then shows the details like destination bank account of the
planned transfer on it's LED display, and after you verified it you
get a TAN which you use on the website.
So the device is not smarter than it needs to be, and can be used
everywhere.


That does sound neat and way beyond what I've seen here...a supposedly financial city.

Actually, about the latest news you brought up about fax machines and hanko's, one thing that the Japanese government shouldn't ignore is the big elephant in the room. And that is Japan's ageing population.

If you're going to bring a new technology in, it needs to be easy enough so that you don't confuse a large segment of the population. Otherwise, whatever Helpline you set up will be inundated with calls... The prime minister is probably (hopefully??) surrounded by tech savvy advisors; the average elderly person in Japan may not be.

And that's the "beauty" of hanko's... It's tangible and easily understood. Heck, even a clueless foreigner like me understood what it was when I first arrived in Japan [1]. Surely the young people think they're in some backwards country, but if the population continues to age at the current rate, hanko's are the least of their worries...

Ray

[1] Actually, what baffled me was it seemed like the ink in the ink pad for hanko's appear to be endless. How do they do that? :-P




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