|
Credit card fraud
is something which the media highlights every so often with criminals
seemingly developing new schemes or methods in order to defraud
credit card holders.
The criminals are able to do this a wide variety of ways, many of which can seem ingenious because they are constantly being required to innovate. As soon as one method becomes known to the police the authorities will highlight this specific method and, becoming known to them, will apprehend the criminals. They then pass information onto the credit card companies who have a responsibility to their customers to protect against crime. Once the credit card company has details of the new fraud method then they innovate their product in order to protect against the ‘flaws’ leading onto more criminals innovation. It is an interesting circle of events.
One of the most recent developments
in combating credit
card fraud is that of the Chip
& PIN system. Typically authorisation to use a card was
provided by a signature and providing the merchant with the card
– or, for internet transactions, simply giving the card information
(number, name etc). Whilst this can be seen as a solid system there
are various ways around this for criminals one they can obtain possession
of the card (such as forging or faking the signature). However the
new procedure requires a pin number which only the genuine cardholder
will know. So even if criminals are able to obtain the card they
cannot use for payment as they will not know the key pin number.
|
