Come on dad, it's the 21st century

My dad shuns modern technology. My dad would be happy if we all went back to doing things with a pencil and a piece of paper. He has never embraced technology with open arms. More like with a suspicious eye. It is not as though my dad is 95 years old and grew up in the days when modern technology meant the electric can opener. My dad is under 60. He grew up watching man inventing shit trying to get to the moon. Growing up in the modern age, you think he would be more open to the conveniences of the 21st century.

A little background so you know what I am up against. My dad spent years writing a book, on a typewriter. I remember when we got our first computer at home, we explained that he could use the word processing program and then editing his book would be much easier than having to retype pages with the typewriter. He refused stating that he "did not trust these computer things." This was in 1990. Computers were being used in most businesses and by 6th graders. Not my dad. Now I am happy to say that we finally convinced him that the computer was not evil and he eventually embraced the home PC. Embraced might be too strong a word. More like accepted it as a part of everyday life. He is still convinced the computer doesn't like him, but will use it if necessary.

I have recently been trying to get my dad to use the new modern convenience of online banking. My dad still tracks all of his expenses by using a ledger. Now for those of us that were not alive in the 50's, a ledger is a book in which the monetary transactions of a business are posted in the form of debits and credits (right out of the dictionary).

I have been using online banking since it was invented in the early 90's. I have had two issues in almost 15 years. Both times my payment did not reach the intended recipient. I was billed late charges. I called my bank, they investigated, they made the mistake, and they reimbursed me all charges. No problem.

My dad refuses to use online banking because he does not want his banking information bounced around the Internet. Now this is a reasonable concern that is shared by a lot of people today. I should point out that this is basically the same reason he uses for not having an ATM card.

Yes I said ATM card. He does not have one and does not believe in them. He does all of his banking by going into the bank and seeing a teller. Now try and imagine how inconvenient this is in the modern day. My bank has one branch in town and I could never get there while they are open. I do all my banking with my ATM card in the grocery store. Not him, he goes to the bank during the day and actually goes in to see a teller.

I know he won't believe me, but I want to tell him that your banking information is safe on the Internet. All banks now use SSL connections and 128-bit encryption. This is actually two different kinds of security used for online transactions. Now to him all this sounds like...wa wa wa wa wa wa (like Charlie Brown's teacher)...So let me try and explain.

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. This is a cryptographic protocol that provides secure communications on the Internet. The protocols allow client/server applications to communicate in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. Wa wa wa wa wa...

In terms I think he can understand, this is like the red phone between the President and Russia back in the 50's. When they picked it up, it went one place and one place only. No one could ease drop or break into the connection. The second part of online security involves the encryption of the actual conversation between the two Presidents.

There are two different types of encryption: domestic grade encryption and international grade encryption. The difference between these two types of encryption is capability. Domestic grade encryption is exponentially more powerful than international grade encryption:

40-bit encryption, also called international grade encryption, means there are 2⁴⁰ possible keys that could fit into the lock that holds your account information. That means there are many billions (a 1 followed by 12 zeroes) of possible keys.

128-bit encryption, also called domestic grade encryption, means there are 2⁸⁸ (a three followed by 26 zeroes) times as many key combinations than there are for 40-bit encryption. That means a computer would require exponentially more processing power than for 40-bit encryption to find the correct key.

Key length determines how difficult it is to reveal the encrypted data. For example, very fast computers can crack a 40-bit code in less than an hour. Using current computing technology, a 128-bit code could be cracked in roughly one billion billion millennia. Suffice to say, by the time the code is cracked, human beings will not exist anymore, most likely the universe will not exist either. Your bank records will remain safe.

There is some chatter about that some new mathematic equations could provide the means for cracking these long key length codes. However, they estimate that building the computer that could crack this encryption would cost about 1 BILLION DOLLARS. I don't think anyone is going to do that in an effort to steal $472.87 in my checking account.

I know my mom reads my blog from time to time. If you read this, please drag dad over to the computer and make him read this. I am sure he won't want to touch the computer so stick close by so you can scroll down for him.

I realize it may be years before he thinks computer banking is safe, but maybe we can get him to at least get an ATM card. Dad, they call it the future, get used to it.