Pay With Plastic, Risk Your Personal Data

[steven johnson]

Europeans have a secret PIN code and card with a chip inside to complete purchases, called Chip and PIN. It has cut down on credit card fraud there. The credit card fraud has now moved to the US.

Jun 15 2009by CBSNews.com
Every time you swipe your credit card and wait for the transaction to be approved, sensitive data including your name and account number are ferried from store to bank through computer networks, each step a potential opening for hackers.


Computer security experts say the PCI guidelines are superficial, including requirements that stores run antivirus software and install computer firewalls. Those steps are designed to keep hackers out and customer data in. Yet tests that simulate hacker attacks are required just once a year, and businesses can run the tests themselves.

In the U.S., that means fewer than 100 payment processors out of the 700 that Visa works with are PCI-compliant.

PCI requires data transmitted across "open, public networks" to be encrypted, but that means hackers with access to a company's internal network still can get at it. Requiring encryption all the time would be expensive and slow transactions.

Pay With Plastic, Risk Your Personal Data

[NashVegas]

1. I'm Starting to Wonder If Barclay Bank Is Data Mining For Profile Puposese

I have a Barclay card because a year and a half ago, I got an Apple Visa through Juniper bank.

When I set up the online access, it asked a few security questions, I was used to it so didn't think very much of it; the typical stuff - pet's name, street you lived on as a kid, etc. For the past several months, though, it's been going deeper. My mom's hometown? What year my dad was born? And I don't recall answering those questions when I set up the access.

I didn't complete the login process tonight because it's just too creepy.

[nilram]

2. Here's a working link to the article (which is from June 2009)

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/15/tech/main5089920.shtml