@lg8302ch wrote:
It is sooo amusing...the hype about EMV chips in the US....recently looked at an old German Amex Blue from 2003 and yes this card had chip already ...chip & pin and not chip & signature..LOL
It's more than hype; I'm averaging about 3 breaches per year, never from the same source. It is obviously scanners at gas stations, retailers, and restaurants. My wife and I both travel enough that there's no pinning it down. These days no hardware is required; a simple key logger on a retail terminal captures the stripe data and it's off to the races for the ripoff artists. I'm no IT expert, but on most retail terminals I can show a clerk how to get the stripe data in about 30 seconds.
Luckily I always use a credit card, so my bank account isn't at risk. But it's a pain to deal with, always watching transactions, disputing, waiting for new cards, etc. And in the end, all of that fraud raises costs which we end up paying for.
Getting the US to a tighter standard is a big deal, and it should have happened long ago.
I want as many of my cards as possible to go to EMV, and once there are EMV ready terminals in use, I will use them exclusively wherever possble.
Also, it's fun to watch the low-information clerk examine my chipped unicorn, then look over my 5 o'clock shadow and tattoos, then look back at my card again as they try to make sense of what the hell they are looking at. Heh heh.
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