PayPal’s security key still needs work

I briefly used a Pay­Pal secu­rity key, but it was a frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence, sim­ply because I kept leav­ing the key at home. PayPal’s inte­gra­tion with eBay is not good, which is sur­pris­ing as eBay owns PayPal.

When I decided to stop using the key, I was able to can­cel the Pay­Pal key online in a mat­ter of min­utes. It took a 15 minute live chat with an eBay rep to remove the Pay­Pal secu­rity key from my eBay account. Per­haps that was a secu­rity step by eBay. How­ever the front­line sys­tem for can­cel­ing the key on eBay’s site did not work properly.

The worst part of the Pay­Pal key: I had to pay US$5 to get one in the first place. If Pay­Pal really wanted busi­ness users to have mul­ti­fac­tor keys, the first key would be free of charge.

Related posts and pages on billso.com

• OpenID
• 11 May 2008: Jan­Rain launches Cal­lVer­i­fID mul­ti­fac­tor phone ser­vice for OpenID
• 10 May 2008: Why use OpenID?
• 30 April 2008: Updat­ing WP-OpenID to sup­port ID Selector
• 21 March 2007: About ecom­merce part 3: The broad­band connection
• 15 March 2007: About ecom­merce part 1: Max­i­miz­ing ROI

Tagged as: authentication, e-commerce, eBay, mobile, multifactor, openid, password, paypal, trust