X-Message-Number: 10505
From: 
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 11:24:05 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Y2K Spinoff#1 for me.


As has been pointed out here in the Cryonet before, even if nothing meaningful 
happens directly 
due to Y2K, the social impact indirectly should also be considered.


Yesterday Y2K hit my banking institution.  Because of the Y2K fears, tecno-geeks
at my bank have 

decided to place all transactions on the internet by January.  Up until now they
have used a 

convenient local access bulletin board system, but now to save us from "the 
coming doom", they 
are placing their financial transactions directly on the internet.


"Risk" magazine I believe was the first to document the hacker who this year 
cracked the Dept of 

Defence's best encryption in less than 24 hours, and the true joy of hackers 
seems to be in 

duplicating and improving.  So now my own bank will join the other lemmings who 
intend to enable 

the possibility of mass electronic credit card fraud to screw up the customers' 
credit histories 
and paralyze their financial standing for months or years - all to "avoid" Y2K.


The exchange of a safe medium (relatively speaking) for a crackable, 
demonstrably unsafe medium 
will happen to my bank's customers still there (I won't be) on January 1.  


I am not qualified to judge the Y2K arguments otherwise ("Read THIS - No, read 
THAT"), but my 

bank's decision to actually reduce safety to avoid Y2K is something pretty easy 
to judge.  They 

were more concerned with being safe from Y2K than in carefully thinking about 
whether or not 
they were actually leaping from the frying pan into the fire.


Maybe the hacker threat is no big deal and my understanding of the risk factors 
(along with the 

best minds in the field) is in error.  However, my bank's decision-making 
process was not based 

on OVERALL risk assessment, only on Y2K.  ("Don't worry, George.  ALL the banks 
are doing this."  

To which I replied, "The same way Barings Bank played option spreads without 
protective 
wings?").


Looks to me that my simplistic non-scientific sampling (MY bank!) may indicate a
possible trend 

which WILL happen.  I think we should at least consider the impact of "Y2K 
Fever" and try to 
prepare for that contingency.  For me, it is no longer hypothetical.

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