Do cards still use magnetic strips? I thought it was all done on the chip nowadays?
Curious if there's an easy way to make my stripe unreadable with my most used credit card, especially for dining where your card can disappear for several minutes at a time.
Inserting the whole card is also a security measure to be able to take the card away if an incorrect pin is entered 3 times, or if the card is left in the device after leaving the ATM.
Countries that have completed EMV roll out still issue cards with mag stripes. It's maybe worth briefly explaining why this might not matter at all:
The payment card networks have two _entirely separate_ mechanisms in play. To a Hacker News reader it may seem insane to not tie them together, but this is how they evolved and apparently banks would rather eat fraud and error costs than spend whatever it would cost to fix.
1. Authorisation. This mechanism is in charge of deciding whether all the parties are OK with a transaction, e.g. "Mike Smith pays Example Co. $145". Cryptographic security can be used to verify that this was really Mike Smith's authentic card, he entered his PIN, Example Co asked for exactly $145 and Mike's bank said that was OK.
2. Payment. This operates entirely on the honour system between banks and retailers. Example Co. says Mike Smith agreed to pay $145 and the backend systems automatically give $145 of Mike Smith's money to Example Co. Done.
Because these two systems aren't tied together at all, even though the authorisation system guarantees the exact amounts, is strongly replay resistant, and so on, none of those properties apply to actually paying your money to some retailer. So regardless of whether it's tricky to get past authorisation it doesn't matter to big fraudsters, they can just take whatever they want and ignore the Authorisation step altogether.
When you realise somebody took your money you will call your bank. They may try to give you the run around (after all, it's easier) but ultimately - perhaps after some notice period - they'll probably agree to reverse that clearly fraudulent charge and if you live in a country with actual consumer protection they may even have to pay back any fees or other financial penalties you incurred as a result of them accepting the fraudulent payment request.
What's the point of keeping a tab then? Why not pay the full amount each night? Also, there's nothing preventing you from giving them a card, then reporting it lost/stolen
It must be a well known paradox, the more you expect people to trust you, the more they will be inclined to trust you.
Took a second, but that sound is just so satisfying.
Now, if Apple would allow me to nickname the damn cards so I could tell which is which, that would be grand. sigh
They got rid of those years ago in Europe.
We are only now starting to catch up to where they were in about 1998. I know, because I moved to Europe in 1998, and I remember how huge of a change it felt like to me. I moved back to the US in 2006, and with regards to credit cards it felt like going back in time at least a couple of decades.