In a growing trend, more and more credit card manufacture are including new EMV chips in their plastic to help stop fraud during in-store purchases. In theory, the EMV chip in your new credit card uses a dynamically generated data code for each purchase, meaning that an attacker can’t simply use the same code over and over for future purchases.
Unfortunately, while security is now improving for in-store purchases a recent study by ACI shows that online credit card fraud cases are growing faster than ever. So far in 2015 one out of every 86 transactions has been a fraudulent attempt, up from one out of 144 transactions in 2014. Simply put, it seems that attackers are taking the easiest route possible to accessing our financials. So, with that being said, what is being done to stop online attacks for those of us who use credit cards? And, with the holidays fast approaching, numbers of fraudulent attacks are likely to ramp up even further.
According to the FTC, around 86% of identity theft victims had their existing credit card or bank account information stolen as a result – with 50% of those thefts originating from fraudulent emails and websites. From that alone the real message here is that many identity theft victims are constantly falling prey to old & true attacks that seem to work over and over again.
In the end, the best protection from an identity attack, whether as a result of credit card use or not, seems to be to use common sense when giving out personal information online. And, if the Prince of Nigeria emails you asking to hold some money for him, well, you had better get some proof first!
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons | http://bit.ly/1XVZAYq
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