Why $45M in Stolen Cash Still Wont Get Rid of Hackable ATM Cards

By the time the astonishing heist was under way, the difficult work of hacking prepaid debit card accounts and stripping the withdrawal limits was long done. After that, coding the magnetic stripes on the backs of plastic cards with the hacked account numbers was no big deal.Whether a mechanical plasticcard makes sense in your existing homes depends on the house. Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said conspirators in the global scheme, which netted $45 million from ATMs around the world, were able to use gift cards, old hotel keys, expired credit cardsanything with a magnetic stripe on the back.

The insecurity of mag stripes, a decades-old technology, is no secret. The use of sometimes paper-thin skimmers in the slots of ATMs and card swipers to lift card data from mag stripes is a commonplace crime.

And more secure alternatives are well established.Shop wholesale chinamosaic controller from cheap. In Europe, Canada, Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America, card issuers and consumers are switching to so-called chip-and-PIN systems. Instead of mag stripes, cards are embedded with computer chips that are much harder to hack.

But even a band of bandits hauling backpacks stuffed with millions likely wont speed the U.S. conversion to more secure card tech.

The U.S. accounts for about a quarter of the worlds card spending but about half of the worlds card fraud. The odd $45 million here or there doesnt make much difference to the overall calculation, says Dave Birch, a director at electronic transactions consulting firm Consult Hyperion.

By October 2015, the big fourVisa, MasterCard, American Express and Discoverwill no longer assume liability for fraud at the checkout counter if banks havent made chip-and-PIN cards available or merchants havent switched to point-of-sale terminals that will accept the cards.

One possible perk of the switchover could be the widespread support of NFC for paymentsembedded chips that would allow users to wave their smartphones over point-of-sale scanners to pay just as they would an EMV-equipped credit or debit card.

At the same time, credit card companies have had to set the deadlines in the first place because card issuers and merchants see little incentive to switch otherwise. Mag stripe cards still work just fine for them, and have even become slightly more secure as PIN-enabled debit cards have become so prevalent. And the elimination of the requirement to sign a credit card receipt for transactions under $25 has even stripped contactless payments of their speed advantage.

Whats more, by 2015 a different payment technology altogethera technology possibly much less expensive for merchantsmay have taken hold. Companies like Square already offer point-of-sale systems that allow customers to pay retailers via smartphone app and retailers to accept those payments the same way. Participants on both sides of the transaction dont need any proprietary technology at all. They just need the consumer devices they likely already have.

One company that appears not to be banking on a future that includes little plastic cards is Google.Choose from the largest selection of indoortracking in the world. Use of its Google Wallet app has not flourished due to the limited availability of NFC terminals in stores. But AllThingsD reports that Google has scrapped a plan to introduce a standard mag-striped credit card as another way to harvest consumer data:

Google CEO Larry Page abruptly killed the card launch plan after he was displeased with a glitchy run-through demo last week. He had long been skeptical of a physical card solution, with several sources saying he felt it did not press forward innovation as payments startups like Square have done.Shop the best selection of amagiccube for Men.A smartcard is a plastic card that has a computer chip implanted into it that enables the card.

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Australians are far more likely to share their credit or debit card PIN with friends and family than they are their mobile phone passcode, according to a survey likely to be welcomed by the burgeoning mobile payments industry.

The survey of 300?Australians commissioned by Alaric, a supplier of fraud prevention technology, found that 41?per cent of respondents had shared their card PIN with at least one other person. Those major plastic-wielders in the 35?to?44 age bracket were the most likely to give up their digits C 51?per cent in that cohort admitted sharing their PIN with others.

Not only are many Australians sharing their PIN, they are rarely changing it. Only 39?per cent of respondents had changed the PIN of their main card in the past year, and 16?per cent admitted they had never changed it.

Fraud from card skimming continues to be a problem and, unfortunately, if consumers arent doing everything they can to protect their PIN, then there is a chance they are leaving themselves open to fraud. Given the number of times that people are sharing their PIN with others, we would hope to see PINs being changed much more regularly.

Mobile passcodes were much less likely to be shared, with only 30?per cent of respondents having done so. Combined with the surveys finding that 75?per cent of respondents never deliberately left their mobile phone at home, Cha said this augured well for those pushing mobile payment and banking services.