Hi, All!

Hi, Ebon!

Apr 23, 2011 -- 11:18PM, Ebon wrote:

Blows my mind. It's quite difficult here to get a card that isn't CNP, they're generally only issued to people with disabilities that prevent them using CNP. Out of curiosity, I actually checked with my bank last time we discussed this and my bank will issue them but if you're not disabled, you have to pay £15 for them because they have to be made specially

Not a problem.  Just contact your local credit-card fraudster, and they'll set you up with a new mag-stripe card lickety-split.

Plain ol' magnetic stripe cards are so easy to clone, fraudsters set up factories in the trunks of their cars.  (You would say "the boots" of their cars.)  All they need is a skimmer to read the information off the stripe of a card that's been swiped, and they're set to go.  Since the info isn't encrypted, they don't need a PIN to decrypt it -- they can just copy it onto a new card, and boom!  You're set.

Or, they can read the information, copy it onto another card, and use it to steal your identity.  After all, they'll have your name and all your banking information...  and if you use your card in an ATM, they may have a hidden micro-camera to record your PIN, too.  Then they can empty your bank account as well as steal your identity.  Cool!

Yes, that's the REAL advantage to magnetic-stripe cards:  ease of skimming and cloning and identity theft, so you need never worry that you're the only person in the world who has a copy of YOUR card, or the only person who is using YOUR name!  

/sarcasm

... Which is why the CnP card is now the standard in all other developed nations, and why credit-card fraudsters from all over the world have been flocking to the US.  We've become the only game in town for credit-card skimming, and our fraud costs are going through the roof.

But hey, the banks all carry fraud insurance, and apparently they think it's cheaper than supplying us with "high-tech" (I know, it's old tech to you) CNP cards.  Mag-stripe cards only cost 10 cents each or something like that, and CNP cards cost a whole $2!

They claim the switchover will cause the merchants large infrastructure costs, too, but that's bogus.  The CNP card is so ubiquitous in all other nations that the companies that make credit card machines no longer manufacture machines that only take "swipe" cards.  Nowadays all new machines are equipped with CNP readers, too.

One of our nations biggest retailers, Wal-Mart, has issued several press statements that it is ready and eager to accept CNP cards for all purchases.  Wal-Mart is apparently tired of credit card fraud, so it has been vigorously campaigning for the switchover to CNP.

(For Americans who don't know what a CNP reader looks like, check the  front of the card readers at Wal-Mart.  You'll see a slot just big  enough to insert the "chip" end of a credit card, and below the slot  will be a little picture of the end of a card with a square to represent  the chip.)

*sigh*

Love,

-- Claudia