:credit_card: Cards
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Hmm, and it's really much rarer here. Guess that chip-and-PIN stuff actually works.
I've only had it recently happen with Sony, I think. So that's once in about 5 years. This current ATM card I've been using is almost worn-through-- I had to admit this is the first time I've had one longer than a couple years, usually the card gets compromised long before it physically wears-out. (Also my bank sometimes proactively re-issues cards for big breaches, even if there's no evidence a particular number was compromised.)
If you do dumb stuff, like pay with a credit card at restaurants, or use it in those skimmer-infested gas pump scanners, then yes I guess you'd get hit more often.
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This whole idea where you have an insecure way to access your savings, and much more secure way to take on debt is VERY suspicious to me.
Yes, thank you. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees it this way.
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Fraud handling is identical, but the refund process is not.
For me, personally, I consider, "do not want easy credit" to be one of my main indicators of "responsible with money".
You are weird.I just pay for gas with gift cards.
You are REALLY weird.I pay cash at restaurants.
You know that thing I said about you being weird?So in summary, as a defense against your accidentally maybe making a minor error every once in awhile, you make all sorts of things more complicated than they need to be.
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Contact less cards are supposed to be secure without this. But it's been a while since I read something about this.
The chip that isn't contactless is very secure, and was only cloned because some vendor made one that didn't follow the spec correctly, I think something with random number generators in it's crypto. But you have to touch it's contacts to read it.
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The grocery store I go to used the $15 threshold for some time, but they've come around to $50 sometime in the past year, IIRC.
The grocery store down the street (when I'm not buying enough to be worth driving a couple miles to Walmart) still asks for a PIN for a $3 gallon of milk.
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Oh; so you KNOW you just picked a bad bank, but you posted your OP as if it was a law of nature because...?
Actually, my bank is fine. Of course, the last time I bothered activating a debit card was when I was a college freshman because there is literally no advantage other than ATM machines, and I don't do cash.
I just hear entirely too many people whinging about it after getting burned (they're mostly with jankass local chain banks FWIW).
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Fraud handling is identical, but the refund process is not.
I can't speak for your bank, but Bank of America refunds it the instant its reported. Same as with a credit card. I've gone through the process before, although given it was years ago, I can confirm this is true and not just balloon-juice from their marketing department.
You are weird.
Right; because I don't want to carry an "instant 9.5% interest loan! No signup required!" card in my pocket. Look, I don't want a loan without at least one sheet of 8.5"x11" paper form involved. I certainly do not want an accidental loan.
I suppose it's weird as in "unusual", but I think it's far weirder (when you think about it) that otherwise-responsible people actually want credit cards.
You are REALLY weird.
Why is paying for gas with gift cards weird?
You know that thing I said about you being weird?
Why is paying cash at restaurants weird?
So in summary, as a defense against your accidentally maybe making a minor error every once in awhile, you make all sorts of things more complicated than they need to be.
How are any of the things I'm doing "more complicated" than the alternatives? You buy the gas station gift cards at the counter, just like you'd buy gas with a credit card. The only difference is if you use them in an outdoor machine, and someone skims the number, the number's only worth (at max) $25 to them. (I buy $25 cards.) And I'm 99.9% sure if the skimmer did get a gift card's magstripe data, they'd have no idea how to get money out of it and just ignore it in favor of the 66,412 valid credit card magstripes they got at the same time.
How is paying cash in a restaurant "more complicated" than the alternative? Because the cashier has to make change, I guess? That's kind of THEIR JOB.
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The problem with contactless cards isn't restricted to cloning the card. The problem with contactless cards is running a transaction right then and there because we've discovered radios, microprocessors and lithium ion batteries.
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Also my bank sometimes proactively re-issues cards for big breaches, even if there's no evidence a particular number was compromised.
That's how I got my current chipped card a few months ago.
I guess you'd get hit more often
I do those "dumb" things, and I've never been hit. Then again, I don't have enough money for it to be worth the bother for the crooks.
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Visa claims it's safe:
How secure is a Visa contactless payment? Very secure indeed, and certainly much more secure than carrying cash. Visa contactless cards use the same secure technology as Chip and PIN so you can feel totally confident when you’re using it to pay. There is a maximum amount of £30 allowed per transaction and, from time to time, you will be asked to enter your PIN to verify you are the genuine cardholder.
Our technology uses the chip on your card to generate unique cryptograms (that’s techie speak for a type of puzzle that consists of a short piece of encrypted or encoded text) and digital signatures to protect your payments. Digital signatures are like handwritten signatures in some ways – but they are much more difficult to forge.
If your card is lost or stolen, you’re protected against fraud loss – providing you take reasonable precautions to protect your card and let your bank know as soon as you realise it's gone.
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How are any of the things I'm doing "more complicated" than the alternatives? You buy the gas station gift cards at the counter, just like you'd buy gas with a credit card. The only difference is if you use them in an outdoor machine, and someone skims the number, the number's only worth (at max) $25 to them. (I buy $25 cards.)
Step 0) Have primary payment.
Step 1) Buy gift cards with primary payment.
Step 2) Have gift cards.
Step 3) Use gift cards to buy gas.
Step 4) Replenish gift cards (at $25, that's going to be... Every single transaction burns an entire card)versus:
Step 0) Have primary payment.
Step 1) Use primary payment to buy gas.Any argument that your way is equal or less complex is demonstrably false.
How is paying cash in a restaurant "more complicated" than the alternative? Because the cashier has to make change, I guess? That's kind of THEIR JOB.
Having cash on hand is something that needs to be actively maintained. Admittedly, I am one of a fairly rare class that doesn't bother at all with analog money on a day-to-day basis, but almost everyone I know has maybe $20 maximum on them at any given time, which isn't even sufficient for a moderate bar bill.
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Many places still don't accept cards here in bumfuckinstan
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I wouldn't mind trying it with my RFID-blocking wallet, I suppose. I need to test to make sure the wallet works first, been too lazy so far.
I don't live in a place where "muggers" are a thing, so I'm always dubious of "safer than cash" claims.
Step 4) Replenish gift cards (at $25, that's going to be... Every single transaction burns an entire card)
That's why I buy $25 ones. Just toss them when done.
EDIT: I guess a downside is if someone steals my car, they also get a bunch of free fill-ups in the glove box? So. You know. Huge downside there?
but almost everyone I know has maybe $20 maximum on them at any given time, which isn't even sufficient for a moderate bar bill.
Ok?
Look, they're welcome to do whatever they want. They are not me. I'm just telling you what I do.
The fact is, when you use that little "tip" line on the receipt, there is NO security, NO safeguards, NO NOTHING other than plain ol' "human trust" to ensure the cashier actually puts that number in their card reader. They can type any fucking number they want.
I suppose you could pay with a card, leave the tip line 0.00 and tip in cash, but I doubt many waitresses will be happy with that solution.
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instant 29.5% interest loan!
And it's a "secured" credit card, which means I had to give them an up-front deposit to cover the full amount of the available credit, so in effect I'm paying (or would pay, if I actually used it) them outrageous interest to borrow my own money. Having bad credit sucks.
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Having credit at all sucks, that's the message I am conveying here.
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I suppose you could pay with a card, leave the tip line 0.00 and tip in cash, but I doubt many waitresses will be happy with that solution.
Credit tips show up on your W2. Cash tips technically need to, but accidents do happen ifyouknowwhatimean.
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The grocery store down the street (when I'm not buying enough to be worth driving a couple miles to Walmart) still asks for a PIN for a $3 gallon of milk.
I would expect that for a debit transaction.
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I don't live in a place where "muggers" are a thing, so I'm always dubious of "safer than cash" claims.
To be honest, if you're here with a card they will take you for a ride, and that is a lot worse than just giving them your money. We call that a lightning kidnapp, it's pretty fun.
And if you have nothing, you can get some spanking as a lesson.
I just avoid walking out of my 4m walls as much as I can. Its better in smaller cities, you even see houses without walls there. Where I live is the innermost circle of hell.
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Credit tips show up on your W2. Cash tips technically need to, but accidents do happen ifyouknowwhatimean.
For the purpose of tips (making waitstaff not hate you), that makes cash tips sound FAR superior. Assuming you're not a cheap bastard. It's a hell of a lot easier for them to slip a couple of those bills in the "wrong pocket" than it would be to fake-out the entire POS system.
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>There is a maximum amount of £30 allowed per transaction
Yes, I definitely don't want one of those.
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I assume that limit is for it not asking for your pin, and it was just badly written
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I dunno. It'd be handy for stuff like Starbucks.
I wonder what the limit in the US is. Only $25, according to the Wikis.
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And it's a "secured" credit card
Yeaaaaah that's another situation altogether. Young/previous fuckups? Yeah go ahead. Debit card away, that's the best solution.
The kind of person that can walk into a bank and say "Iwannabuyacar" and walk out 15 minutes later with a cashier's check and a sub-1% loan? Revolving credit is a useful emergency resource and an effectively free tool to streamline your finances.
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Having credit at all sucks, that's the message I am conveying here.
In general, yes, I agree it's a bad idea. However, some businesses (car rental agencies, Home Depot tool rental — it varies from business to business, and sometimes location to location in the same chain) will not accept cash or debit cards at all, ever, under any circumstances. You must have a credit card with sufficient credit available to cover the maximum expected rental fee/deposit, or they'll tell you to go away. Maybe you'll say, fine; I don't want to do business with them anyway, but if you're at an airport and you need a rental car to get to a job interview, do you really want to spend an hour going from counter to counter pleading with them to take the only card you have, and have them all say no?
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I dunno. It'd be handy for stuff like Starbucks.
Which is another reason for me not to have it. Honestly, I don't get what the big convenience is to have a "contactless" card.
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car rental agencies,
I've rented cars three times with my ATM card with VISA logo. This is again just urban legend that people keep repeating and keep repeating but is just simply not true. (Maybe it was true at one time, I don't know. Not since I've been old enough to rent cars.)
Maybe you'll say, fine; I don't want to do business with them anyway, but if your at an airport and you need a rental car to get to a job interview, do you really want to spend an hour going from counter to counter pleading with them to take the only card you have, and have them all say no?
Again: I've had absolutely no problems renting a car using a ATM card with VISA logo.
Which is another reason for me not to have it. Honestly, I don't get what the big convenience is to have a "contactless" card.
Yeah it's not like I'm drooling over the prospect, I'm just saying I'd be willing to give it a go if my RFID-blocking wallet works at advertised.
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Yeah it's not like I'm drooling over the prospect, I'm just saying I'd be willing to give it a go if my RFID-blocking wallet works at advertised.
I guess it's attitudes like that which are why we can't have nice things.
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I've had absolutely no problems renting a car using a ATM card with VISA logo.
YMMV. I have. Previous job had Hertz corporate discount Gold #1 membership for employees. Could not rent with debit card. This was within the last 2 – 3 years.
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I've rented cars three times with my ATM card with VISA logo. This is again just urban legend that people keep repeating and keep repeating but is just simply not true. (Maybe it was true at one time, I don't know. Not since I've been old enough to rent cars.)
I've seen it happen. I ended up renting a car for a friend in my name on my card because they wanted to put an $800 hold on her debit card (which wasn't going to happen) with a $300 balance.
Hell, every single time I've rented a car on personal travel (it doesn't happen if I give the corporate account number), I've had a $500 hold sitting on my credit card for the duration. Which, because credit, doesn't affect my actual ability to pay for things.
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But my question is: does the cards with a chip in them need to be RFID-blocked?
No, the chip is like a SIM card, where it has to make physical contact with pins in the reader.
Now if someone makes a chip card WITH an RFID capability, then you'd have to keep it out of the blocking pockets.
Other than that I can't even imagine why ANYBODY would want an RFID blocking wallet, considering how many handy convenient things use RFID.
The answer is "security concerns". Those concerns may be overblown, but everyone who makes RFID-enabled devices claims they can only be read from a few inches away, but that's a flat-out lie: increased power on the readers lets you increase the range dramatically. Here in Dallas, the toll roads all use RFID readers that are about 6-8 feet above the top of your car. I believe pretty much any place with a toll system called "express pass" or anything like that does that at this point. Florida, Massachusetts, and Chicago I think are all using RFIDs toll tags.
So if you've got a modern RFID-enabled passport, for example, anyone can get at the information on the RFID chip, which is why (IIRC) the passport itself comes with an RFID-blocking sleeve.
Is this a practical concern? I dunno. Technically it's a legitimate one, at least potentially.
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Of course. Why the heck is something like this not implemented company-wide? How is it even possible that some stores support it and some don't?
I had one cashier tell me one time that "debit cards don't work, you have to swipe them still." Having been a cashier, and having observed plenty of them, I take statements like that with a grain of salt. No, it's not copyright law that prevents you from returning a CD, even if that's what the manager told you, for example. All I know is that the readers I've tried will time out. It could be a misconfiguration somewhere. If I called the corporate number, it'd probably get fixed right quick.
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Hm, I'll just have to ask the bank when they issue it.
Just call the local branch. The tellers will probably know, because they will probably have seen some by now.
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Bank of America ATM card with a VISA logo, the number is: 7
Visas all start with 4. :P
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Did you ask if you could use a debit card if you didn't use the mega corporate Gold #1 A++ plan?
I've seen it happen. I ended up renting a car for a friend in my name on my card because they wanted to put an $800 hold on her debit card (which wasn't going to happen) with a $300 balance.
So you're in this thread telling me you can't rent a car with a debit card, and you've personally seen it happen. And you demonstrate this by telling me a story about a rental agency that DID OFFER TO RENT THE CAR ON A DEBIT CARD as evidence. Brilliant debating tactic there.
We're not debating, "do they put a hold on your card?" That's a different issue. (And the answer is yes.) We're debating, "do they allow it at all?" And the answer to that is also yes.
Idiots.
Your post is so dumb it's giving me a headache.
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There are all sorts of fun ways to get good range off RFID.
Was at Defcon a long time ago and someone was doing a talk on RFID security. Had an off-the-shelf low power RFID reader wired to an antenna wrapped around the doorframe to the talk. Everybody who had a work RFID badge on them? Skimmed. That was before we started sticking standard RFID into our phones, credit cards, bus passes, hotel keys, car keys etc so there weren't too many suckers (plus Defcon people tend to be canny enough to assume that anything they have on their person in the conference hall is game to be compromised)
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So you're in this thread telling me you can't rent a car with a debit card, and you've personally seen it happen. And you demonstrate this by telling me a story about a rental agency that DID OFFER TO RENT THE CAR ON A DEBIT CARD as evidence. Brilliant debating tactic there.
Where did I say that? I am arguing it is impractical as all fuck to walk around with an enormous hole in your bank balance, particularly in this era of automatic payments.
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My experience shows this to be true. That's Bank of America, one of the larger banks in the world.
It's a hair more nuanced, in practice. If you have a debit Visa that you run a debit transaction, it may not have the Visa protections. In spite of that, the bank may provide better protection than the network default, so if BoA says "any kind of transaction you run your Visa BoA card gets Visa-style fraud protection," then that's probably true. If they don't say that, though, it's safer to assume that transactions processed as credit have better protections than those processed as debit.
if you have a bank that screws you on fraud protection of debit cards, that's not a universal experience. Switch banks.
Agree.
I just pay for gas with gift cards.
There used to be this chain of gas stations in the Carolinas that took cash at the pump, like a vending machine.
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THAT'S WHAT THE TOPIC WAS! THAT'S WHAT WE WERE TALKING ABOUT!
If you changed subjects without a clutch, you can't blame me for being confused.
I am arguing it is impractical as all fuck to walk around with an enormous hole in your bank balance, particularly in this era of automatic payments.
Not an issue to me, unless their hold was truly enormous. That's part of the whole "responsible with money" thing.
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Do all of the above before the October deadline
BTW, the local brand-new (just went online in August) Sam's Club does let me use my debit chip card as one, in spite of the fact that the brand-new, built at the same time Walmart, that is literally right next door, doesn't. The Sam's chip readers didn't work for a couple of weeks after the cutover date, either.
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But any charge bigger than a few bucks will ask for a pin. And the data you read from rfid is only good for one transaction.
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The grocery store down the street (when I'm not buying enough to be worth driving a couple miles to Walmart) still asks for a PIN for a $3 gallon of milk.
The people who suggested having to memorize a pin was too hard, and thus chip-and-signature was NEEDED to be supported, in spite of debit cards that all require pins having been around for literally 30 or 40 years, should all have been punched in the face.
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Replenish gift cards (at $25, that's going to be... Every single transaction burns an entire card)
Here in America, we have companies like Walmart that make reloadable gift cards.
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I suppose you could pay with a card, leave the tip line 0.00 and tip in cash, but I doubt many waitresses will be happy with that solution.
You'd probably be wrong, because if you tip in cash, the waitress can not report that to the IRS. (Yes, that's illegal, but it's on her, not you.)
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if you're at an airport and you need a rental car to get to a job interview
If I were in that situation I would be expecting them to foot the bill for the car.
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The people who suggested having to memorize a pin was too hard ... should all have been punched in the face.
I'm still annoyed that my card used to have a 6-digit PIN; now it only has a 4-digit, and there's no way to use a longer one. Also that a 4-digit PIN is the only thing standing in the way of somebody taking out a federal student loan in my name. (Well, that and my bad credit; I have to jump through some big hoops to get loans on behalf of my kids.)
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I've rented cars three times with my ATM card with VISA logo. This is again just urban legend that people keep repeating and keep repeating but is just simply not true. (Maybe it was true at one time, I don't know. Not since I've been old enough to rent cars.)
I have done so too, but I believe it's like he said, some of them will do it and some won't.
http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/paying-for-rental-car-with-debit-card-1276.php
says that 90% of the locations they surveyed in whatever year that was took debit cards, but some put additional restrictions on, like putting a $300 reservation on your card or requiring you to buy additional insurance.
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You are weird.
It's a sad commentary on our society that not wanting to take on debt is considered weird.
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If you changed subjects without a clutch, you can't blame me for being confused.
That's more likely because you were timepodding, though. Who drives stick these days?
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I would be expecting them to foot the bill for the car.
In my experience, they will, but only after the fact. I pay up front, and they reimburse me. (I'm still waiting for the reimbursement for my last interview.) Unless it's for a contract/consulting gig, in which case all expenses come out of my own pocket. Tax deductible, eventually, but I'm out $600 in air fare, hotel, and car rental in the mean time.
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He was granny-shiftin' and not double-clutchin' like he should.
ritual suicide
