Debit Cards (was: RE: ATM scam)

[Ian Miller]

At 10:46 10/06/99 +0100, you wrote:
>Security would be easy if humans were not involved. Bank card security:
>the good, the bad and the inconvenient...
>
There is another way in which human failings render debit-card horribly
insecure.  The shop assistant almost never checks that the number on the
slip being signed matchs the number on the card.  This is the only check
that the card is not a trivial clone, i.e. a card with some else's debit
card details written onto the magentic strip.

The viability of this method of fraud was proven by an investigation for
German TV.  They wrote the details of one of the journalists on the
debit-card of a German lady shopaholic who had had all her cards withdrawn.
 They did this with kit available from a high-street computer shop.  They
sent her shopping and filmed her having no problem at all using the card
all over town.

This is very worrying especially in view of the proposed `rebuttable
presumption of validity'.  Personally I refuse to have a debit-card at all
for this reason.  To date I have considered credit cards adequately safe
because I can refuse (and have refused) to pay the bill when necessary.
However with a proposed 'presumption', it will make credit cards much more
dangerous.

Ian