Needled by PINs (From Gazette & Herald)

Needled by PINs

On the same day as I received my new passport in the post, and David Blunkett waxed lyrical on the benefits of identity cards, my mother sent me a newspaper article and photograph of a Newcastle store.

Bainbridge is thought to be the oldest department store in Europe, possibly the world. It was opened in 1838 as a drapery and fashion store by the Jasper Conran of his day, 21-year-old Emerson Muschamp Bainbridge, and his friend William Alder Dunn, and later acquired a fabulous marble food hall.

The business prospered for over a century, but was hard-hit during the war years. By the early 1950s, financial constraints forced a merger with the John Lewis partnership, which is itself celebrating 75 years in business this year.

A few years ago, in keeping with company policy, the name was changed to John Lewis, but it will always be Bainbridge to me, and my account card is still literally a Bainbridge's card because it has never been updated.

I found it quite poignant that my mother was so interested because, the day before she sent me the cutting, she had cancelled her account with Bainbridge/John Lewis, which she has had for over 60 years. Her mother bought her clothes for her there when she was a child, so, technically, she has shopped at Bainbridge's for longer than John Lewis has been trading.

But now, John Lewis has produced its own credit card. Unlike Marks and Spencer which simply (and illegally) changed its account cards to credit cards without asking customers if they wanted them, John Lewis has had to ask customers whether they want the new cards or not.

My mother decided that she didn't. I have explained that she does not have to use it as a credit card and can pay her bills at the end of the month as she has always done, but she will not be moved. She might have accepted the card, but she refuses point-blank to have yet another pin number.

She has always been a whiz with numbers, but she is now 85 years old and has had enough of plastic cards cluttering up her purse, and having to remember sets of numbers. She realises that she could change all the numbers to one set, but it seems like too much trouble as she doesn't get out much these days and would have to make special trips to the bank, the Post Office and so forth to make the changes.

I suppose the final irony is that she can use her Marks and Spencer's card - which she accepted without a qualm because she thought it was her new account card - to purchase things in John Lewis.

I don't have her facility - or indeed anybody's facility - with numbers so I have never bothered with pin numbers. When they were first introduced, we did not have a single bank machine in Kirkbymoorside so I couldn't use mine anyway, but I stored the number somewhere safe, in a place so secret and secure that I've never been able to find it since.

Now, we have two bank machines, but one bank has reduced its counter staff to a single person and the other is only open in the mornings. Machines are the order of the day. In addition, the bank cards are being changed to make them more secure, and pin numbers are required if you want to use them in certain stores.

I received one of these new pin-secure cards before Christmas last year. As I had no idea what my original pin number was, I went to the bank, filled in the forms and was assured it would be sent to me again. I have still not received it, so the day I am asked for a pin number in Safeway, or wherever, is the day I will have to ask to have the goods put back on the shelves. I have stopped carrying the bank card.

Yesterday, I received a three-page questionnaire from the bank asking my opinion on their services, which they hoped I would spend a few minutes filling in. I have filed it in the same place as they filed my request for a pin number.

I am not alone in my difficulty with pin numbers. People who are diagnosed dyslexic can apply for an exemption certificate to save them having to use pin numbers, but the rest of us will just have to go on muddling through.

I realise that everything that is happening is supposed to make systems more secure and try to combat fraudsters and people who actually steal other people's identities. It is common to be asked to provide other means of identification. Utility bills and bank statements are accepted as proof of identity, but no one should think that they are secure.

A tenant in a block of flats where the post is left in open trays to be collected by the residents noticed that electricity bills and bank statements had sometimes gone astray. Mentioning it to other tenants, he discovered that some of them had also had post taken; one young man had received letters from five different banks which had issued credit cards in his name to someone using his bills as a means of identification. He notified the banks and the police and was told that it was a common practice for people to steal personal information and set up accounts, but let them lie dormant, not activating them for a couple of years. They would then spend thousands of pounds in transactions in a burst of activity, leaving the bills to be sent to the unfortunate householder.

So gas and electricity bills are not necessarily proof that you are who you say you are. My new passport will, I assume, be acceptable if I need to identify myself, but the photograph has been skilfully turned into what looks like a hologram, and I'm not sure that it looks all that much like me.

In the same week as I received my passport, a woman was convicted and imprisoned for stealing millions of pounds from her employer. She was a trusted employee - so trusted, according to her version, that she was given a million pounds a time as a mark of her employer's appreciation. You might think that she used some complicated scheme to steal the money, but no, she relied on the oldest trick of all, a forged signature. No pin number or identity card needed.

If an identity card backed up by a fool-proof, secure, computerised system really would mean that I could prove I am me without any more hassle, I would be delighted to have one. On the other hand, every airport in the country was out of commission when the latest computerised system failed.

There is a cheering footnote to the John Lewis card problem; I wrote to the chairman of the company, Sir Stuart Hampson, giving my reasons for closing my own account, because I don't want to change to the new system. I expected that, as happened with the bank, my letter would be ignored.

Far from it - I received a personal letter signed by Sir Stuart, almost by return of post - covering all the points I had raised, thanking me for my custom and assuring me that if I want to go on using my existing account card I can do so. My mother was delighted to hear this and John Lewis has kept two very satisfied customers.

Updated: 12:58 Wednesday, June 16, 2004