11.The image system,introduced in 2004 by a Silicon Valley firm called PassMark Security,offered banks a pain-free addition to their security arsenals.Bank of America was among the first to adopt it,in June 2005,under the brand name SiteKey,asking its 21 million Web site users to select an image from thousands of possible choices and to choose a unique phrase they would see every time they logged in.
12.SiteKey “gives our customers a fairly easy way of authenticating the Bank of America Web site,” said Sanjay Gupta,an e-commerce executive at the bank.“It was very well received.”
13.The Harvard and M.I.T.researchers,however,found that most online banking customers did not notice when the SiteKey images were absent.When respondents logged in during the study,they saw a site maintenance message on the screen where their image and phrases should have been pictured.The error message also had a conspicuous spelling mistake,further suggesting something fishy.
14.Mr.Gupta of Bank of America said he was not troubled by the results of the survey,and stressed that SiteKey had made the bank's Web site more secure.He also said that the system was only a single part of a larger security blanket.“It's not like we're betting the bank on SiteKey,” he said.
15.Most financial institutions,like Bank of America,have other ways to tell if a customer is legitimate.The banks often drop a small software program,called a cookie,onto a user's PC to associate the computer with the customer.If the customer logs in from another machine,he may be asked personal questions,like his mother's maiden name.
16.Rachna Dhamija,the Harvard researcher who conducted the study,points out that swindlers can use their dummy Web sites to ask customers those personal questions.She said that the study demonstrated that site-authentication images are fundamentally flawed and,worse,might actually detract from security by giving users a false sense of confidence.
17.RSA Security,the company that bought PassMark last year,“has a lot of great data on how SiteKey instills trust and confidence and good feelings in their customers,” Ms.Dhamija said.“Ultimately that might be why they adopted it.Sometimes the appearance of security is more important than security itself.”
Questions 1-5
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage? Please write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the writer
FALSE if the statement does not agree with the writer
NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage
1.According to internet security experts, secondary security measures provide little additional protection against fraud.
2.In the Harvard and MIT study, two subjects didn’t log on without seeing the correct pictures.
3.According to Schechter, more than 90% of online banking customers studied logged on without seeing the right pictures.
4.The image system is the only security measure that the banks mentioned in the passage have currently.
5.Bank of America is the first bank that adopted the image system.