@maiden_girl wrote:
@jsucool76 wrote:
@maiden_girl wrote:
I had not heard this before. Good to know. I like the idea of the EMV chip in every card. I like to have my information protected during each transaction. With all these data breaches..kinda scared to use my card! One of the reasons I switched from a "blink" Freedom card to a non-blink card.
The EMV chip doesn't do anything until all the retailers have EMV compatible terminals, and your information can still be at risk until the magnetic strip technology is eliminated.
Really? I thought the EMV scrabbled your data when used during each transaction so that it would be harder to hack. Retail stores still need to have EMV terminals in order for this to be effective? Chip is useless then..
A major advantage of the chip is that it is much harder to clone than a magnetic strip, which can currently be copied fairly easily, by a waiter or a clerk if they have you card for a short period of time. For backward compatability, the cards still have magnetic stripes, but EMV POS devices don't allow the card to be swiped if they detect a chip (so at most Walmarts these days, you have to insert your card if it has a chip). As the devices get more common (and as trumpet mentioned there is an incentive for merchants to adopt them) then mag stripes become useless at more and more places, and there is no gain in cloning them
Currently, a disproportional amount of global "card present" fraud occurs in the US, as card cloned abroad can easily be used here.
