Last night, having completed an excellent course in computer assisted reporting led by Aron Pilhofer and David Donald, I was having a well deserved drink in a neighbourhood bar when my wallet and mobile phone were stolen. Within half an hour I had called up to cancel the cards, shut down the phone, etc.
But my credit card had already been used to withdraw first £20 and then £200 from an ATM. I never use my credit card for cash withdrawals and I hadn’t used my card in the bar. (As anyone who knows me will testify, I rarely get my cash out.)
But how safe is chip and pin technology if – in the space of thirty minutes – someone can crack the code and help themselves? I guess my answer would be – not very…and I’ve just tried to call the police and report it for the – let’s call it umpteenth – time. To no avail. So officially it isn’t even a crime. (Update: just managed to report it online.)
3 responses to “Off topic: How effective is chip and pin?”
Adrian, it’s worth remembering that chip-and-pin wasn’t introduced to stop this sort of fraud – the unmentionable reason was fraud in shops from staff taking copies of receipts and forging signatures. Staff transaction fraud has fallen something like 90% now, apparently. But we don’t talk about that because it was never a problem. And we’ve *always* been at war with Oceania.
I was just venting…besides under the 2006 Fraud Act it’s not a crime the police are obliged to give a monkey’s about – not until the bank asks them to investigate. And according to the civilian police support worker I spoke to that doesn’t kick in till £100k.
A couple of weeks ago I was in a London Pret buying a sandwich and drink. I didn’t have any cash on me so I used my Maestro card. Handed it to the nice lady at the till and… she handed it right back. Asked her if there was a problem, and she said no. I looked at her till and a sign said Pret had organised their own security system for their stores which overrides chip and pin – and so I didn’t need to prove who I was. The counter person didn’t even ask me for my signature.
I was a bit annoyed by this. If Pret can get away with this then who else is going to dump PIN numbers? Regardless, I don’t want some numpty whose nicked my card to walk off with a BLT sandwich and not even have to prove he’s me.