cjk1701 replied to your post “Answers About Chip Cards”
That's such a cultural dissonance. Here in Germany the ship thing is so omnipresent that I can't even imagine thinking of it as inconvenient.
Yeah, but I bet in Germany the readers actually function and take less than 15 seconds, yes? I mean, even if it doesn’t improve in the US, I’m sure in five years I’ll be accustomed to it. That doesn’t mean it’s not stupid.
It’s...people seem to think I’m objecting to the chip qua chip, which I’m not. I’m objecting to the fact that it’s barely functional at doing what it’s MEANT to do, let alone providing any additional convenience or benefit.
youneedtolookatthis replied to your post “Answers About Chip Cards”
It prevents a certain kind of fraud very well - the kind where someone puts a second card reader on the card reader and swipes your information as you slide your card through it. Not sure so much about anything else.
But all our cards still have mag stripes on them and you still have to insert them when using an ATM. So the fraud you described, which I agree is very common, still happens and has no induction to stop happening. In fact, chip cards which have the tap function removed (like all of mine) now HAVE to be swiped rather than tapped, which increases the risk.
Additionally of course, our cards still have the numbers printed right on ‘em, so even if we got rid of the mag stripe, you could build a rig that had a camera instead of a mag reader and just recorded the numbers on one side and the 3-digit security codes on the other as the card was inserted.
Visa apparently said in January that fraud was down 26% from the previous January’s numbers (not, it should be noted, from the previous year on the whole) but while they credit the chip for that, they haven’t exactly been forthcoming about how the chip has managed that or where the fraud has dropped. In the meantime, I’m seeing a lot of articles about how fraud has dropped sharply in Europe in brickspace stores, but has just moved online (where there’s less likelihood of the perpetrators being recorded on video or caught in the act).
