The bank is NEVER the victim, it’s the merchant. As a merchant who sells performance automotive tuners online, I can tell you that it is I who loses the money on these fraudulent transactions (if they get by me and the product gets shipped).
The bank loses nothing whatsoever other than time involved with having processed and then reversed the charges.
Agree...The interest rates charged by these credit card companies is criminal.
I am extremely careful - and was never hit.
That is until late May/early June.
What a headache.
I am extremely careful - and was never hit.
That is until late May/early June.
What a headache.
Europe has a "smart card" design for a decade if not more. The smart card can't be copied, and all purchases require posession of the original card. US cards are just dumb pieces of paper with a number on them. Cards themselves have no value, it's the number that matters. Lose the number and have a problem.
Card skimmers are now installed by criminals in many locations. Some are installed *inside* gas pumps, for example, and they connect directly to the wiring of the pump. Nobody can detect the skimmer without opening the pump, and as you can imagine this is not done frequently.
Carrying cash is not a good option - if you lose the wallet you lose your money forever. With a c/c you have time to cancel. Not buying over the phone or the Internet is also not a very appealing option today.
There are some one-time cards. I personally never used them. Another option is to have a debit card that can't be overdrawn, and you transfer the money into the card's account only when you need to make a purchase. This should be easy with most banks.
There are technological solutions that can fix this problem for good. But banks in the US are clinging to their plastic; they think they are better off this way. Smart cards cost more, and there would be a need for investment into secure purchasing infrastructure, you'd need to scrap hundreds of millions of mag stripe terminals and replace them with smart card terminals... and for what? Losses to the bank are tiny, and they certainly write them off anyway, so after taxes the bank doesn't lose anything. Besides, if a merchant posts a fraudulent transaction and the bank issues a chargeback it's the merchant who is on the hook, not the bank.
When properly done, such a secure system can be very reliable, short of torturing you to make you pay for something the attackers want. It would work this way. You have a card that has a cryptographic processor inside. A terminal "talks" to the card, and uses modern encryption to verify that the card is yours, and that you are you (by entering a PIN.) Note that the card does the encryption and authentication here - without the card nothing will happen; there are simply no numbers on the card. To buy from home you would swipe the card at your home terminal (a PC with a cheap USB dongle), and the PC software would route the encrypted communication to your card and back. Again, the PC doesn't need to be trusted - only the card and the bank's computer know the plaintext. And you can't open the card, it's tamper-proof. If you lose the card the attacker needs to know the PIN to use it, and with a PIN long enough the bank computer will not allow him to try and try again. I think there are cards with a fingerprint reader.
So the only thing that is missing is the "can do" approach. Engineers are standing by, ready to clamp down on the c/c theft. But the executives do nothing. A familiar theme these days.
This same thing has happened at the company I work for - company credit cards - someone keeps “swiping” them in California. We’ve had to cancel each of the cards at least once because of this.
So what I gather is that they are getting the information, and making the fake cards.
The last one was the result of a problem at a hotel in Oregon my boss went to while on vacation.... or so says the letter we received from them.
Presidential FRAUD is chronic.
I have a Citibank card I have had for many years and use only for medical expenses. For many years I didn’t use it at all. The only charges are to my personal physician at a fairly large medical group and two eye groups. I also pay for prescriptions from my Medicare Advantage insurer.
In April or May, My statement included three identical $333 charges to Brookstone
I called the CC company and was referred to the fraud division where their immediately canceled the card and reissued a different one. They also canceled the charges and one additional of which I was not aware.
They would not discuss the fraud or possible source of the fraud. It had to come from one of a very limited number of medical vendors
The CC company fraud division is on the ball and instantly resolved the issue. There was some post event correspondence and a required affidavit that I did not make the charges in question.
Hey, don’t worry about it! Didn’t you hear that Obama’s going to pay our credit card bills?
“My main concern about this is....... WHO is paying for it?”
Anyone paying 21% to 36% interest.
I had they exact thing happen to me on a trip to Los Angeles last summer.
They duplicated my card and waited a month and hit it from 6 $200 transactions at grocery store in Malibu.
I think they physically make a copy of the card, and also copy the info on the magnetic stripe.
Then it's easy to build a new card. Any card is from a bank where my photo is on the front of the card.
I think I know where the card was copied; if you have seen the movie Rush Hour; don't eat at the Chinese restaurant featured in the first movie! Or pay in cash if you do!
I got hit twice the past year for a total of $9,500 overseas. Credit Card companies are going to have to do something more.
More recently I was notified that my educational loan, which was originated in 1980 and paid off within a few years, was part of a security breach. I've requested credit reports, and have a year of free screening available to me, in case of identity theft.
We continue to use our credit cards, but I always check the statements carefully against receipts. We also let the credit card company know when we're traveling, since they are quick to cut off credit if the charges are outside our typical travel area. I've had a few charges investigated, but over the years I've never had any that turned out to be fraudulent. A few merchants failed to process return credits properly, so watching the statements carefully has paid off.