J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Bought a ticket for the Heathrow Express train yesterday, went through the selections, put my card in, it accepted it and chucked it back out, no pin, no signature or anything, but it gave me my ticket.

How does this work, anyone could use a stolen or lost card to buy tickets ?

Is it like the old unattended purchase done over the phone ?

boxst

Hello

If you go through toll roads (like the M6) it does the same thing for speed.

All it does is validate that the card isn't reported stolen and that's it.

Steve

Chris L

All cards and issuers have a minimum limit for checking whether a card is valid or not. It's simple economics. It's done because some card readers are off line and can't connect to the card issuer to check that the card isn't stolen.

Could anyone use a lot or stolen card in that way? In a word yes

What you find happens is that a person's card will be stolen and then cloned onto a blank credit card. You then have to find a low value, anonymous place to plug in the credit card and see if it is accepted. The perfect place is one of the BT phone booth that accepts cards. If it allows you to make the call, you know the card hasn't been blocked.

Have a look around some of the bigger London terminals and you will often see these blank cards lying around by telephone booths. Does anyone care, does CCTV work? What do you think.

Simple reason is that the banks and issuers make too much money to bother about the small card theft. These cards often get used for low value crimes like buying Oyster cards etc - TfL is currently willing to accept £250,000 a WEEK in fraudluent transactions using credit cards to buy Oyster cards.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Everybody but me has some kind of scam going on !

Jerome

I've bought petrol and airport car park tickets with cards and never have to enter a pin etc.

Just make sure you report stolen cards quickly.

Chris L

This will make you feel even better then Have a read of Chip & Spin. The guy who wrote it (Ross Anderson), is a Cambridge University professor and probably the foremost security expert in the UK today

brumdaisy

Even more worrying....

When I came to pay my hotel bill on holiday I didnt enter my pin or sign the receipt, yet the receipt stated 'PIN confirmed'. Imagine trying to dispute that one with the bank

This was for over £400 - well it did include my bar bill

Leslie

It has probably sent all your details to the scammers J4CKO!

Les

EP82

If i remember correctly, the self service tills are like this in ASDA?

Chris L

The reason for this is that your PIN number is stored on the magnetic strip - this is as a result of the change over to C+P terminals and not everywhere accepting them. This is why the recent Shell Garage C+P fraud was possible.

simpsons !

I pay for petrol at the pump in my local Tescos (99 Ron). Just insert card says i can put a max of £60 worth of fuel in fill up and **** off ! saves any waiting at the till.