While I was perusing the USA Today on my iPhone app today, I saw the article about car privacy, but I also saw this article on apple changing its verification policy for access to purchases on iTunes or the App Store. Currently users can look around the App Store and select to buy something. Then, so long as users have a credit card linked to their account or money in their Account, they just need to enter in their Apple ID password and the purchase is made. Now, with the new changes when users need to make a purchase they will be sent a four-digit random code to a trusted device they have linked to their account. Then, the users enter in the code to complete the transaction.
I’m not sure how I feel about these new changes. Obviously the intentions of this move are quite code. No body wants to have money stolen from them, but I’m not sure how well these extra security measures actually help. For myself if I want an app odds are I’m away from my computer so they will send me a text message to the phone that I’m ordering the app for, which more than anything else seems just like an inconvenience. I would also like to say that in general I’m not too sure how extra security measures help. Whenever I have to choose a security question for an account, I can either pick a really obscure question, which means that it might be difficult for me to get exactly right later if I lost my password, or I can pick a simple question that anyone could guess if they knew anything about me. I think we as people in the computer industry have a duty to protect our users, but I don’t know how far that duty needs to go. I don’t know? I’m not the most forward thinking person when it comes to my accounts, so I would like to hear what you all have to say.