PayPal, eBay offer Security Key to U.S. customers

Great idea for PayPal and would make it easier for physicians and hospitals to honor PayPal accounts for payments of medical bills. BD

San Francisco (InfoWorld) - PayPal unveiled a new Security Key on Friday that will add an additional layer of security to user accounts and help prevent online criminals from gaining access to them. The PayPal Security Key is a small electronic token that generates a unique code that can be used in addition to a user name and password when users sign in to their PayPal account.

The company announced the news as part of eBay's week-long Developer Conference in Boston. It provides PayPal customers with so-called "two factor" authentication that makes it harder for online criminals to raid accounts, even if they do trick users into giving up their user name and password using online "phishing" scams, according to Michael Barrett, chief information security officer at PayPal.