@xerostatus wrote:
I am personally a little skeptical on the actual virtues of EMV, especially the Chip-n-sig variety.
That set up still relies on the due diligence of a lowly cashier to verify that your signature matches or whatever.
I used my chip card at walmart the other day, at the self checkout.
Machine directed me to insert the card (instead of swiping) and transaction went through. No cashier checking sigs, or IDs, or nothing.
I didnt even sign the touchpad thing.
I dont see how that's any different than magnetic strips.
And yes, I'm aware that EMV chips are inherently more difficult to clone than magnetic strips, but EMV cloning is not unheard of, so...
Basically, once its cloned, the gates are wide open.
That is because Chip cards (of either the signature variety or PIN) can, for small transactions, athorize without the need for a signature/PIN. That isn't where its security enhancement comes from. If your physical card is stolen and used before you have a chance to reprot it, yes, it will go through for such transactions. The difference with magnetic strip cards is that the chip generates a unique transaction code for each transaction, which can only be used once. So if someone copied the information from a reader and duplicated a card, they will have duplicated a static transaction code, which would already have become inactive. It makes stolen information harder to profit off of.
