The number of credit and debit card frauds in the United States is one the rise. A recent survey suggests that nearly 33% of the customers in the country have reported some form of credit card fraud over the last 5 years.
Consumer Reports’ Andrea Rock told Mary Louise from NPR that one of the main reasons for the increase in fraud is the fact that the technology used to protect cards in the country are old and outdated as compared to the measures adopted by the other European countries.
In one of the recent articles written she wrote for Consumer Reports clearly talks about this gap in technology. She says that the personal information on the customer’s credit card is stored on the magnetic strip without any encryption making it highly vulnerable to fraud. This key information can be copied easily and used on another duplicate card. Though credit and debit cards face the same problem, criminal prefer targeting debit cards because of the ease with which they can use the duplicate card to withdraw cash from the ATMs.
In comparison to this, Rock says that the credit and debit cards in the European countries are safer. The primary difference is that unlike in the case of US cards where information is stored on the magnetic strip, in the European cards there is a small computer chip embedded in the card that stores the key information. This chip makes it tougher to copy the data and duplicate it, thereby making the cards safer for use.
