not crypto, but fraud detection + additional

[Allen]

Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> 
> *Irish Bank Debit Card Skimmers Net €1m*
> http://www.epaynews.com/index.cgi?survey=&ref=browse&f=view&id=121179135013743148197&block= 
> 
> 
> from above:
> 
> Most of the withdrawals took place at the end of April and early May 
> 2008. Many of the victims contacted their banks to notify them of the 
> withdrawals, as the banks’ fraud detection systems had failed to spot 
> the suspicious activity.

I don't know what the policy is in Ireland, but here in the USA 
there is no stop loss on debit cards so the banks are not 
obligated to make good on fraudulent withdrawals. I believe that 
most have out of fear of bad PR, but you have to fight for it if 
it is just a few that it happens to. If this happens too much 
then people might stop using debit cards. I have advised my 
mother, 87, to not use them as she is getting a little slow on 
the uptake and might miss something like this if it happened to her.

Now to show how screwy the system is, I was shopping the other 
day and the power went off in the grocery store I was at. They 
had backup power so they were able to check out people; however, 
they couldn't use debit cards, except.... Well, the screwy thing 
was if you entered the charge at terminal as a credit card, even 
when it was only a debit card, it would accept it. I checked my 
bank, and sure enough the charge showed as a POS charge!

I think the logic is a little screwy and might be able to be 
exploited though I'm not sure how at the moment.

Best,

Allen

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com