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Comment by chipsa | Hacker News Reader

Did the stealing occur in your home town? Do you show up in people search tools?

Yes, credit card was definitely stolen while I dined out at a nearby restaurant (like 1 mile away).

It was pretty easy to pin it down as I had been ill a few weeks and done basically 0 in-person, physical card transactions in that time. It was a restaurant where they bring you the bill, then walk away with your card for a few minutes (which is becoming less the norm these days).

It has pushed me to only use my Apple Card for these types of purchases where the physical card goes out of sight, as theres 0 card info on the card for them to snap a photo of.

I'm amazed there are places that take cards out of sight. Even for physical cards, I'm just so used to going to a designated cashier point.

Are these also magnetic strip cards?

Yes, the US credit card situation is decades behind. We added chips when rest of world had tap, and then we finally added tap when everyone had NFC on their phones. We've only recently started doing the mobile POS terminals at restaurants with the waiter coming to you, but it's maybe 10% of restaurants at most. The standard practice remains handing your card to the waiter who then disappears for a few minutes to ring up the bill.

We also never got rid of swipe, and most cards have their number/expiry/security code printed right on them. Everything you need to go shop online with someone else's card...

It's terrible infosec all around.

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