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Comment by jlmorton | Hacker News Reader

You should not be upset with Adobe. You should be upset with your payment card provider.

This industry has systematically externalized the cost of these data breaches, and the security systems necessary to try to prevent them, to every other business and end-user in the country.

There are many ways to solve this problem. Europe has largely solved this problem, and using your antiquated American credit card in Europe is not only difficult, but even if possible will elicit crazy looks.

What other industry today would you trust that the only security is a 16 digit number that you repeatedly share with the world and your zip code? And to think this is how we secure our money?

Adobe is offering a service that costs at the least tens of dollars to 38 million people. What is your credit card offering?

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Abobe is required to offer credit monitoring. That's not an optional altruistic service on Adobe's part. Depending on the details of the hack, the CC processors can also fine Adobe significant amounts.

The credit card company is offering full fraud protection. So if someone does use your CC for fraud, you're inconvenienced, but not liable. That's far more than what Adobe is required to offer.

I'm quite happy with the American system of "it's the CC provider's responsibility to sort out fraud". It allows commerce to flow, and the backend can figure out fraud most of the time. Putting the burden on a consumer via a PIN system now means consumers have to be more careful, which is bad for consumers and could possibly deter them from using the cards as much.

Edit: The one thing I'd agree on is the broken system of "credit" in the US. Any company can ruin your credit rating based on their own internal policies, and successfully fighting is a major ordeal. All a company has to do for proof is show a bill, which they literally can just make up.

Additionally, requiring an SSN for everything is ridiculous. Cable TV and prepaid T-Mobile even demanded one. In Canada, no company is allowed to refuse service if you decline to provide your SIN.

The free monitoring is only available to the subset that they've confirmed had their payments info affected. They currently are claiming this is only 3M of the 38M customers.

Source: They just directed me to protectmyid.com and told me to sign up and pay for it myself. Not a great customer service experience.

> Europe has largely solved this problem, and using your antiquated American credit card in Europe is not only difficult, but even if possible will elicit crazy looks.

Wait what does Europe do? Just genuinely curious, and a cursory google search didn't return anything.

Chip and pin cards.

I can confirm, when I first came to the UK four years ago, only major retailers seemed willing to accept my Canadian CC, and even then, the cashier usually had to call the manager to confirm that it's ok.

Another thing I have to credit Europe with is the lack of proprietary debit card systems like Interac or Plus. It's all done via Visa/Mastercard Debit, so you're never forced to do your online shopping on credit.

Coming from Vancouver, I assumed chip & pin cards were widespread across Canada (they are here). I suppose this is not the case?

AFAIK, it works the same online as your typical magnetic strip card, however, it's associated with a PIN which likely (hopefully) isn't stored by the merchant. Similar to a card security code (CVV).

Otherwise, offline you place it into a card reader and enter a PIN. The card then authenticates the transaction only if the PIN matches. The card stays within the reader as you enter the PIN.