This was a big problem in New York. Thieves would put skimmers on top of the card readers at supermarket checkouts and then drain the food stamp accounts of people who went through those checkouts. The state initially refused to compensate victims despite the fact that this wasn’t even a scam that someone could chosen to avoid. The only safety measure was to try and disassemble the card reader to see if there was a skimmer that would come off.
Eventually politicians changed the policy and compensated people after there were so many cases of theft that major newspapers were writing about it. I don’t know if theft is still frequent but less talked-about because victims get compensated, or if the authorities managed to put an end to it. But I’m not surprised that criminals would do such a thing, given that they do so much worse.
What shitty system even allows this to happen? It’s not like the microchip in credit cards that allows for secure transactions is particularly expensive.
Small addendum because I looked it up:
Apparently checks aren’t the only ancient aspect of the US banking system. Chip cards have apparently only come around in the past few years, prior they used the insecure magnetic strip cards that can literally just be copied.
Also, the chips aren’t that much better than the stripe. It’s harder to clone the chip and much harder to do en masse, but far from impossible. On top of that, the measure that is supposed to prevent cloning from being viable is almost never actually required, that being the PIN.
It’s called “Chip and PIN” for a reason. It’s a 2FA system where one of the factors just isn’t required and the other can be readily compromised. It’s baffling how we have a functioning system for digital payments when seemingly no one is willing to properly implement and then use a secure standard.
I travelled to the US from Canada recently and was super confused when I didn’t need to enter my PIN. Was also really confused about giving away my credit card to bartenders
At least credit cards are… on credit. You can usually just stop a transaction if someone makes unauthorised use of your credit card. If this also happens with debit cards, your in more trouble. Than the money is just gone.
This was a big problem in New York. Thieves would put skimmers on top of the card readers at supermarket checkouts and then drain the food stamp accounts of people who went through those checkouts. The state initially refused to compensate victims despite the fact that this wasn’t even a scam that someone could chosen to avoid. The only safety measure was to try and disassemble the card reader to see if there was a skimmer that would come off.
Eventually politicians changed the policy and compensated people after there were so many cases of theft that major newspapers were writing about it. I don’t know if theft is still frequent but less talked-about because victims get compensated, or if the authorities managed to put an end to it. But I’m not surprised that criminals would do such a thing, given that they do so much worse.
What shitty system even allows this to happen? It’s not like the microchip in credit cards that allows for secure transactions is particularly expensive.
Small addendum because I looked it up:
Apparently checks aren’t the only ancient aspect of the US banking system. Chip cards have apparently only come around in the past few years, prior they used the insecure magnetic strip cards that can literally just be copied.
On some revolut (finance app, popular in ireland) cards the magenetic strip is disabled by default.
Also, the chips aren’t that much better than the stripe. It’s harder to clone the chip and much harder to do en masse, but far from impossible. On top of that, the measure that is supposed to prevent cloning from being viable is almost never actually required, that being the PIN.
It’s called “Chip and PIN” for a reason. It’s a 2FA system where one of the factors just isn’t required and the other can be readily compromised. It’s baffling how we have a functioning system for digital payments when seemingly no one is willing to properly implement and then use a secure standard.
Tap to pay is much safer though.
I travelled to the US from Canada recently and was super confused when I didn’t need to enter my PIN. Was also really confused about giving away my credit card to bartenders
At least credit cards are… on credit. You can usually just stop a transaction if someone makes unauthorised use of your credit card. If this also happens with debit cards, your in more trouble. Than the money is just gone.
Fortunately in the US debit does generally require the PIN and always has even before chips.