Remeber the flourish and fanfare when chip & pin was rolled out for UK credit and debit cards? It make us all safer from card fraud and remove the requirement for the shopkeeper to check a signature. Of course, it wasn’t widely mentioned that as C&P came in, liability for fraudulent transactions was quietly shifted from the card companies to the retailer.
Hmm… and you may have noticed, if you buy petrol at a Shell station, that C&P was rolled out a lot later there than other retailers. The reason for this is that some of their C&P terminals (that you put your card and pin into) were hacked to grab pin number and chip data, so that fraudulent cards could be made up and used. The C&P scheme was withdrawn until new secure terminals were rolled out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4980190.stm
Petrol giant Shell has suspended chip-and-pin payments in 600 UK petrol stations after more than £1m was siphoned out of customers’ accounts.
Eight people, including one from Guildford, Surrey, and another from Portsmouth, Hants, have been arrested in connection with the fraud inquiry.
The Association of Payment Clearing Services (Apacs) said the fraud related to just one petrol chain.
Shell said it hoped to reintroduce chip-and-pin as soon as possible.
That was more than 2 years ago and Shell has long since resumed using C&P. Similar things have happened to some other petrol retailers since.
Well, now it’s supermarkets as well. Today, late in 2008. Holy farking hell.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4926400.ece?Submitted=true
Detectives are investigating a sophisticated credit card fraud against customers of some of Britain’s biggest supermarkets that may be linked to extremists in Pakistan.
Fraudsters have targeted more than 40 stores in Britain, including those of Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, in an elaborate scam that police say involves tiny devices inserted into the stores’ “chip and Pin” credit card readers.
Back at the time when chip & pin was first rolled out, I was deeply suspicious of the whole thing – the idea that a four digit number could replace something as unique as a signature. The idea that the element of you actually having to be there to sign the chit being remove didn’t sit comfortably with me. But like most, I rolled with it and waited for the bad new stories.
I’m done with it. Chip and pin can bite my ass. I’m paying cash from now on. It really is the only way to limit liability.
Taking the banking and finance world as a whole, the folly of the cashless society is really becoming clear.
AJ
Some other sources of woe about Chip-and-PinLaden:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN#Criticism
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/11/lloyds_tsb_chip_and_pin_fraud/
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/saving-and-banking/article.html?in_article_id=416139&in_page_id=7&ct=5
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/businss/industry_sectors/technology/article4525429.ece
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