From Iceland — Landsbanki To Do Away With ID Keys

Landsbanki To Do Away With ID Keys

Published November 6, 2012

In one week’s time, Landsbanki’s ID key – or “auðkennislykill” – will be no more, to be replaced by an experimental new way to ensure privacy when banking through the internet.
Those who live in Iceland and use the ID key, who number about 100,000, are probably familiar with the minor annoyance these keys can cause, as they tend to break easily, their displays fade with time, and one has to fish out their keychain to conduct basic bank transactions over the internet.
Those people can take heart, Vísir reports, as the ID keys will be done away with one week from today. Instead, Landsbanki will adopt RSA’s next generation of online banking security measures which, on the customer end, will only require a user name and password.
Mark Crichton, RSA’s business manager, told reporters that the ID keys did not actually provide any additional security. In doing away with them, banks could adopt other measures in terms of dealing what appear to be suspicious transactions, such as calling the account owner to confirm that they are the ones accessing the account.
Landsbanki will be the first bank in a Nordic country to adopt RSA’s new security system.

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