Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikeknoop | Hacker News Reader

Most (if not all?) credit card companies will not hold you liable in the event your card is stolen. They also require you to get a new credit card number and report the old as stolen in order for this protection to exist.

Now the question is, are you going to trust that just because you have this security card you don't need to report the card as stolen / get a new card?

View on HN

> Now the question is, are you going to trust that just because you have this security card you don't need to report the card as stolen / get a new card?

No, but I'm going to trust that it's harder for the thief to make any charges in the time between stealing my wallet and me reporting it stole.

Also, if my credit card is stolen, I'd need to get a new one.

No, I'd still report it missing because I would assume it would be possible to crack even though it appears secure to me. I don't know enough about encryption to say how likely, but of course I'd still report it. The point is that unless the thief has my code as well, there are no charges to wonder who's liable about. Your answer seems to suggest that you'd prefer the current method where some of your money gets stolen but it's OK because the CC company picks up the tab.

Except of course with the new super secure card it can't be the banks fault because it's secure - so any fraud must be your fault and so you are liable.

That's what they tried here with chip+pin cards

Actually I'm fairly sure it's only legal for them to hold you responsible to ~50 dollars in case of ID theft. Don't you think the CC companies would want to make you liable? Of course they would.

These are the same banks that denied phantom ATM withdrawals were possible and prosecuted people who reported losses for bank fraud. Within days of introducing chip+pin (where you enter your atm PIN at the checkout to use the debit card) it was discovered that pin readers at all Shell gas stations, and a couple of major supermarkets had been compromised and were logging all the card details and pin of your ATM card.

The T+C of the card claims that since you must have revealed your PIN to somebody it's your liability. Until there was a massive public outcry.

In Switzerland, you get a 6-digit PIN, a chip in the card, and SecurID to log into online banking, but you are held responsible if unauthorized transactions go through.

Just if the transactions went through with your personal secret pin code. And even then it's certainly a case by case basis.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com