A couple of years ago the UK was sold on the idea of Chip And Pin for their credit and debit cards. We were all told the inconvenience was worth it to significantly cut fraudulent use of our debit and credit cards. As usual there were some valid arguments against the chip and pin, which the card issuers assured everybody were invalid, and chip and pin would stop card fraud.
Now the BBC news site reports a ” 25% rise in the fraudulent use of UK credit and debit cards” Yep the same cards now protected with chip and pin are being used fraudulently.
A lot of the fraud is carried out overseas where there is no chip and pin, or in online and telephone sales. Strangely one of the arguments against chip and pin was the fact that unless it was worldwide it wouldn’t be as secure as we were told. Score one for the naysayers, who also pointed out the online insecurity at the time.
It looks as if someone has the opportunity to give out a big “told you so” to the chip and pin companies.
Just one last thought from me, if they were so wrong about chip and pin stopping card fraud, what makes the UK government so sure that the proposed ID cards will really stop ID theft, terrorism, and illegal immigration?
ID cards have been proven not to work elsewhere in the world but when did that matter as long as you can convince the people otherwise, like was done with chip and pin.