it wasn't too long ago that we were mostly paying for things by swiping our
credit cards as furiously as you'd swipe toilet paper after eating that spicy
burrito special yeah but the venerable
magnetic stripe is being phased out in favor of EMV chips which have become
quite common in most of the world over the past few years but are just now
catching on with our friends in the United States but why are we ditching
the magstripe in the first place unsurprisingly one reason is security
mag Stripes Store data like card numbers and expiration dates in an unsecure
manner meaning bad guys can steal the information quite easily in a variety of
ways for example if you're somewhere like an ATM or gas station that only
accepts mag stripe cards visually
inspect the card reading equipment and give it a little jiggle to see if it's
loose if something seems not quite right
it's possible that someone has installed an inexpensive car skimmer which reads
your card as you insert it into the slot and transmits the information to a
nearby criminal who can then use your card number to at best waste your money
and at worst make super suspicious purchases that could land you on some
kind of fbii watch list and more skilled
hackers can even sneak malware onto retail systems that's a lot more
difficult to detect this is what happened in the US recently when tens of
millions of customers had their data stolen when cyber criminals planted
malware in the payment systems of the retail giant Target so how then do chip
cards prevent these types of breaches well they use a form of public key
cryptography you can learn more about that in general in this video but here's
what happens specifically each time you insert your chip card into a reader the
card generates a random code that's good for that transaction only depending on
how exactly the encryption is implemented the terminal can use
encryption keys to decrypt your account information and authorize this
transaction even if it can't communicate with your credit card company unlike
magstrip cards which always had to do this to process a transaction since each
code is onetime use only it's totally useless to an attacker that intercepts
it and if your card gets stolen it's extremely difficult for someone to clone
the chip as opposed to magstripe cards which spit out your information as
readily as a participant in a Watermill eating contest spits out
seeds that visual aside many systems also now require the use of a pin or
personal identification number so even if a thief tries to use your original
card instead of cloning it the transaction won't be authorized unless
they know your PIN a better solution than the old authentication method that
only involved signing a receipt of course EMV chip cards are not foolproof
aside from the constant arms race between financial institutions and black
hats who try to crack their security there's also the backwards compatibility
purposes of your card I mean many chip cards still have a MAG stripe which are
just as vulnerable as ever and the chip doesn't do much to stop fraud in
situations where someone can just enter a card number such as pretty much all
online stores that have online shopping that being said it's still better than
what we used to have but until we have James Bond style biometric scanning at
every gas station and 7 11 in the freaking world keep your card close and
think twice before using it at a shady Merchant you don't want to have your
credit card limit maxed out by some dude who promises you an official lonus
action figure with hot swappable sandals and a little version of the LT sweater
after he says all you have to do is put your credit card information into the
message box like I did I'm still waiting
Jacob where's my action figure anyways
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check out channel superf fun I have no idea what's happening over there I think
I've been in one episode in the last like half a year so um it's hilarious
though I still watch it every Wednesday like clockwork I just want more episodes
over there hopefully we can figure that out eventually anyways bye I