Two-Factor Authentication

A few days ago I received an e-mail from my credit card company asking if I had made a certain charge. I had not and so they cancelled my card and overnighted me a new one. In the 30 years I have had that credit card, I had never had a single fraudulent charge. Unfortunately the e-mail I received was the second such e-mail in about a month's time. That means someone used my card a month ago and somehow received my new credit card number and pertinent information to do the same thing again. How do I know it was the same person or organization? Well both fraudulent charges were to the same company, which is more than a coincidence. Fortunately my credit card company caught the theft and I didn't have to worry about disputing the charge.

I find it very interesting that a credit card I have had for 30+ years suddenly became compromised. It had me concerned about all of my other financial interests. After all if someone could get my credit card number so easily, what about my other cards or my bank account. The first thing I did was to enable two-factor authentication for all of my online financial accounts. That means that even if someone is able to break my fairly complicated password, they won't be able to get into my accounts unless they also manage to steal my mobile phone.

Two-factor authentication relies on two methods of verifying you are who you say you are. The first locked door is your password. The second locked door is associated with a physical device such as your phone or computer. When I log into my bank account, I can't complete logging in until I provide a very temporary unique code that has been sent to one of my phones. Should I get a notification on my phone that I didn't initiate, I can immediately lock my account before anything nefarious happens.

With online theft happening more and more, I highly suggest setting up two-factor authentication for all of your online financial access. This includes banks, credit cards, brokerage accounts, and any other account that has access to your money. While it is not foolproof, it is another layer of protection that could save you some serious heartache.

The High Price of College Text Books

My oldest son just left for college and it has been interesting to hear about his adventures. While he is only eighteen, he finished his Associates degree this summer and entered college as a Junior. That means he has completed all of his general requirements and can focus on the fun classes. He is in the Computer Engineering program and has a few programming classes that he really enjoys.

One of his classes is an introductory programming class where he is learning Java. For the record, I think Java is a horrible language, but that is a topic for another day. However I am interested in what my son thinks of Java and so I was asking him about it. He was able to complete his first programming assignment even though his text book had not arrived. I was surprised that he didn't have his text book until he told me how much it cost: $110.

My first question was, "How could a book to teach someone Java cost $110?" There are hundreds of books on the market and most of the good ones are less than $50. Furthermore, the best references for Java are online and only a troglodyte would require a textbook. I mentioned the cost of the Java textbook at lunch last week with some of my work associates and they all agreed with my assessment. To say we were outraged would be an understatement. Considering we all work with computers on a daily basis and most of the group were programmers, it should say something about the disconnect between our University system and real-world programming.

My son had purchased his textbook from Amazon.com in the hopes of saving some money. Instead of $110, it was only $50. The only problem was that it took 10 days for him to get the book (the book arrived yesterday). Having written and published a computer-related book in the past, I started doing a little research to discover why it cost so much. It turns out that the book uses 4-color printing on every page. At 500 pages, that makes it an expensive book. While color is nice, if you need pretty pictures to understand a concept, you are an idiot. If you are an author and can't convey your message without 4-color pictures, you are a super-idiot. Finally, if you are computer science professor at a major university and require your students to purchase a $110 text book that uses 4-color printing, then it is obvious that you are too stupid to make it in the real world and had to resort to being a professor. I guess there is a lot of truth to the old cliche that, "Those that can't do, teach."