OT. Credit Card Hacked, Skimmed in the U.K.

The president of Paypal had his credit card hacked. It's the more secure version of a card. Article here:

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(USA Today)

Reply to
Dean Hoffman
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It's the slightly more secure version of the card, where it has a chip, but it still has a magnetic stripe. The skimmer pulled the data from the magnetic strip. Had it been the European-style chip and PIN card that doesn't have the magnetic stripe, the skimmer wouldn't have been able to hack it.

Reply to
Moe DeLoughan

Someone in the US can't actually use a chip and PIN card without a strip now, right?

And that means to change over, for a while we'll have to carry two versions of the same card, or they'll have to have two kinds of readers at every location, right? It will take quite a while and a lot of coordination, iiuc?

What happens if I try to use my strip-based Visa card overseas now? Last trip a few years ago, I used it often to get money.

Reply to
micky

The real problem is the cost for the banks to convert is more than they lose every year.

Reply to
gfretwell

Here in Canada, my Avion Visa-Infinite card (with $14k credit limit) that I got about 4 years ago has a chip - and mag strip.

I don't think I've used it anywhere in the past year that didn't have a chip-reader.

All chip-reader terminals have mag-swipe capability - for when the connection to the chip fails and you have to resort to swiping the card. This failure happens consistently at some vendors. For example, there's one particular checkout lane at a local Home Despot that constantly fails to connect to the chip on my card.

Pretty much all gas pumps are converted to chip-readers. When you insert the card, you hear a small click and the card is physically locked in the mechanism until the transaction is completed. As with all chip transactions, you enter a 4-digit pin and the transaction proceeds. No signature required (not that any signature was ever required at gas pumps).

Reply to
Home Guy

Not int he US, but they could in Europe.

You can use one reader. Europe can generally take our US cards by swiping. There will have to be a transition period though. My guess is the chip and pin cards will also have a magnetic strip at least initially until new readers are in place.

Still can be used. That may change in the future, but right now, Europe will take our money in many versions. The best exchange rates I found were by using the ATM.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

The signature is not really required on any electronic credit card transaction. It is just to make the customer think there is some kind of security.

Reply to
gfretwell

A magnetic strip has to be passed through a swiper to read it, say within 1/4 inch. No walking by you to read the thing.

A chip (RFID) you can read from probably a foot a way. Not sure which is more secure.

Now RFID tags have a drawback. You can only read the outer cans in a pallet of cans as the magnetic exciter field can't go through metal. So, make up two thin strips of sheet metal (lot of nickel helps) to place on both sides of your chip credit cards in your wallet. Should protect you against walk by ass holes.

Oh yes, and there is another absolutely secure method many have forgotten about. It is called "cash". Then the ass holes have to mug you directly. And in my state (Nevada), they have to practice running over

800 feet per second before they can pull that one off. (More guns, less crime. Funny how that works.)

Here is how ass holes steal any kind of card:

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Reply to
Todd

Some of the gas pumps here in the central U.S. require one to punch in the postal zip code of the card's owner.

Reply to
Dean Hoffman

Most of the time I've had to do that for the past several months, but one gas station where I filled up recently did not require it.

Perce

Reply to
Percival P. Cassidy

So that puts everyone in the PayPal President's shoes, no safer than we are now.. Someone posted that he had a dual-method card.

It felt weird. I'd charged a lunch in Belgium on MasterCard as early as 1973 (there was a big MasterCard sticker on the front door, almost as wide as the door, but it still took them 20 minutes to accept my card. I guess the sticker was meant for locals. I had to charge it because there were 3 of us and the other guy, who was 7 years older than I or more and owned a business, kept paying for everything. I didn't like him though. He was cheating on his wife (with my female friend, ugh. I didn't know he was married, until he had me over to his home for lunch and his wife had to serve me lunch in the back yard. I don't know if she knew who I was. I know she knew he was having an affair, because he had planned to go with my ffriend on her summer vacation for 3 or 4 weeks, and he told his wife about it, and she told him she'd leave him if he did, so he didn.t. I was glad to get back to the USA where no one I know does stuff like this. (Actually no one I knew here at the time was married so it was easy not to do stuff like this.)

But it was still a big deal 5 years ago when I got money from an ATM in Jordan.

Reply to
micky

Using either my current Visa card (with chip) and previous Visa (without chip) in the US going back at least 6 years, I can't remember a time when I'd use the cards at a US gas pump and NOT be asked to punch in a zip code. Which never worked because they didn't seem to have a method for converting a 6-digit alpha-numeric postal code into a 5-digit zip code. So I always ended up paying inside.

Reply to
Home Guy

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