Smart card

[Roy A. Gilmore]

I've been watching this thread for a while, and felt the need to chime
in. Are smartcards (or USB tokens) a PITA? Sometimes. BUT, leaving your
private key on your laptop, tablet, or phone is about as secure as
leaving a spare key to your house under the door mat. I cringe every
time soft tokens are brought up. Laptops, tablets, and phones are
hacked, lost or stolen frequently. If a physical smartcard or USB token
seems like too much of an inconvenience, then your data probably isn't
worth taking the time to encrypt in the first place. How much is your
data worth to you?

On 04/08/2017 01:29 AM, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
>> Smartcards are a pain in the ass.
> A funny but completely accurate way to put it:
>
> When your private key is on your laptop, you never put it through the
> wash by accident.
>
> (I can tell you from personal experience most smartcards handle being
> washed just fine, but the static charges they're exposed to in the dryer
> will often fry them.)
>
> Once you make a smartcard into a credit card, or a dongle you hang off
> your keychain, you open yourself up to some very interesting failure
> modes -- many of which you won't see coming.  For instance, I once tried
> to pay for a hotel with my kernelconcepts card, because it was located
> adjacent to my credit card and I pulled it out by accident.
>
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