Chip & PIN essays

Chip & PIN essays Fraud cost the UK Government 402 Million last year alone Traditionally when you pay for an item over the counter in any shop throughout the UK, using a credit or debit card, a receipt is printed for you to sign, to verify payment and for the cashier to verify that the card belongs to you by comparing the signature on the back of the card, to the receipt you signed. But recently credit card fraud has been on the increase as criminals are cloning stealing the cards and learning to forge the signature that appears on the card. This is happening more than ever before. Goods can be purchased with the swipe of a card, and a signature on a piece of paper, the cashier has the difficult task to determine whether the signature has been forged or not. This is quite a difficult task because it can be very hard to tell. Card issuers being more aware of this, have launched cards with a 3 digit security code, which is totally unique to the card, and is located on the back of the card (see fig 1.0), which is needed when using the card on-line, this has h elped towards cloning the cards, but if the criminal has stolen the card, this is useless. Now with the introduction of the new Chip cards, customers verify payment by typing in a 4 digit PIN code into a small keypad (see fig 2.0) much like you do at a cash-machine. The cashier verifies the owner of the card by the entry of a correct PIN. So if the card has been stolen, it is near impossible for the criminal to use the card, because they cannot forge the PIN, if a PIN is entered wrong 3 times the card is locked for use and the bank must be contacted. It is also much easier for the card holder to do something if they suspect they have been watched or someone knows their PIN. Previously if someone has cloned the card and the signature is the only form of identity verification, then the card had to be stopped, and a replacement sent out. Assuming the card hasnt been stolen, ...