Same here.

That's actually a really good idea. I think I'm going to start doing that.

That's an idea that deserves support.

I could never understand how credit cards are supposed to work, if all you need is the number and the name that are so incredibly easy to obtain, since you have to use them all the time, to cause all kinds of trouble.

Bye
Thanee

Bank of America does this as well, since they bought out MBNA's credit card side.

AMEX also has a special raeder that basically craetes a temp acct the same way.

Me, I just use a pre-paid Master card for buying on line.

Well, as a customer service person for a credit card company, I've got a pretty good idea of how it works for visa and mastercard, at least. Discover, American Express and other smaller cards may work differently in the fine details.

Basically the merchants have to meet minimum standards of how they handle the credit card info, and so do their credit card processing companies.

Long story short, the merchants promise not to defraud the credit card companies, and the credit card companies promise not to screw the merchants. Once the authorization has been granted (i.e. you run your card through the machine and the merchant computers call our computers), the credit card company is then obligated to honor that transaction and pay the merchant. The flip side is that the merchant has to maintain on hand proof that the charge is valid (i.e. the signed slip) and provide a copy of said proof on demand, in less than 30 days (45 for out-of-country merchants).

If they can't provide the proof, the merchant get's "charged back," meaning the credit card gave them money, and now it's taking it back. For non-card transactions (i.e. online), the proof is a little more hinky. Basically the merchant has to have a 'reasonable idea' of who they're dealing with and provide, on demand, applicable personal information about the buy, which is primarily shipping or contact info.

Also, whenever companies find out about breaches, such as what happened to spawn this thread, they usually contact all the affected credit card companies, who fraud departments either shut down the number right away or put blocks on them while they try to contact the customer. In low-risk compromises (don't ask me what that means) they may just put a 'watch' on the card, so the 'out of the ordinary' filters are hypersensitive.

So while credit cards are relativly easy to defraud, in theory, it's not so easy in practice because the merchant has a vested interest in preventing it (because they're the ones who lose, just like if the product had been shoplifted and they had to pay for the paperwork), and the credit card companies have a vested interest in preventing it (because they lose money on investigations, because they have to pay the investigators). Plus, automated fraud detection programs are usually pretty good at catching something out of the ordinary. The company I work for has been known to shut people out if they charge more on a single day than 2x the average for the previous month -- I hate the christmas shopping season, way too many calls to transfer to fraud -- or if they make charges more than about 50 miles from their residence address.

I've found that in the last year or so more and more cashiers do. Or at the very least pretend to as they hold my card until I sign and glance at the signature and the back of the card at the same time.

Also I had an old card near expiry that had the back rubbed to the point you could barely see the signature anymore and I was getting picture ID checks occationally.

This is Alberta, Canada BTW. Perhaps there has been a push by the card companies locally to enforce due diligence and get nasty with stores by erring more on the side of charge backs?


That said there are some gas station chains around here that you "pay at the pump", and one gas station chain where they just run your card through the strip reader and that's it, where it doesn't even require a signature. But those aren't particularly large purchases, the product bought isn't easily returned or resold for profit, and I bet fuel purchases are easy problem domain for the theft detection software to work with.

http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/

Been doing this for 4 years on two different cards. Never had a problem. Either I've got awesome stickers, or those signature panels aren't as slick as you make them out to be.

So far, my "Check Photo ID" sticker is averaging one request per year's worth of transactions.

Because the SR4 forum is where all the cool kids hang out?

A little more seriously, this is the more active forum and as far as I'm concerned for me the general SR forum. Certainly this is ironic given Cain's history of gnashing his teeth at SR4. There are likely lots of people that bought SR4 products at RPGNow. How many people bought SR3 products there in that time period and don't come to the SR4 forum, I'm not going to speculate. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was less.

Should the thread be in the General Gaming forum instead? Yeah, probably. It might get moved. The reason for it getting created here is like the same though. More eyes, because it is about an awareness.