Smartcards

Part I of Essay
A Smartcard is a standard credit card sized plastic card with an integrated circuit embedded in it. This integrated circuit includes a microprocessor and a bit of memory, which together hold information in electronic form and controls who uses the information and how they u ....

Part II of Essay
.... that is installed on the chip. Even the simplest cards, like the pay phone cards, are smart enough that they are virtually impossible to copy or falsify. However, the simplest do not provide any security against unauthorized use. In other words, if you lose your pay phone card, anyone else can use it. There are of course smarter cards that provide such security by incorporating a password or even a biometric identifier such as a fingerprint to restrict its use to one person. The most sophisticated cards can manage several passwords ....