UK eBay users to get security tokens next year

People who use eBay in the UK will have the option of using two factor authentication on the site to protect their personal data.

The site will offer the option of a hardware security token via PayPal, which generates a new account password every time you log on. Trials of the system in United States, Germany and Australia have now been finished and will be rolled out across some European counties, including Britain, next year.

“We’ve heard from our customers that they like the extra layer of protection that the PayPal Security Key provides,” said Mike Vergara, director of account protections at PayPal.

Take-up among trial users of the tokens has been relatively high. eBay surveyed 650 of its American users and over a third already had the key and four out of five thought it was easy to use.

They also wanted to expand the use of the tokens, with 84 per cent wanting a token for online banking, over half wanted one for share trading accounts and nearly 50 per cent wanted one for accessing their health records.

The tokens come from Verisign and are part of its Identity Protection line (VIP). The PayPal tokens will be on key ring fobs but the company also builds number generators into credit cards and on mobile phones.

“When we announced VIP last year, we knew consumers and the businesses that serve them would rely on VIP to protect their transactions from online fraud, though we couldn’t have anticipated such a huge global demand for this service,” said Fran Rosch, vice president of Authentication Services at VeriSign.