Standee wrote:
Up until today I had thought it was no longer allowed to sign for Card payments, but I had to at Leeds station as they only have one card machine for all 8 booths.
Surely this isn't secure?
You can still sign for card payments and you can also swipe the card to use the magnetic stripe instead of the chip and pin (EMV) technology. These are fall back situations in case (as you found) there is a problem with the chip and pin reader (in your case none available).
When a retailer in the UK doesn't use chip and pin they are liable for any fraud. When it was mag stripe or signature verification it was the banks who were liable. When chip and pin came in it became the
customer who was liable as the banks argued chip and pin was completely secure (it isn't). That changed a bit in 2009 when the government made the banks have to prove you were negligent in some way such that your chip and pin card being compromised really was your fault.
So while signature or mag stripe based verification is less secure you are not liable.
Years ago when testing EFT software we used to clone out own cards using the innards of a cassette player, some plastic card and tape from a video cassette. It was THAT easy to clone a card.
You can't clone an EMV card but it is possible to intercept what goes on with the interaction between the chip and the reader but you really need to know what you are doing to do that.
Card fraud these days is much more likely to be due to theft having watched you enter your pin previously. We know of someone who recently got hit for £7000 after their purse was nicked in a scam in the local Morrisons car park. They used the same PIN for all their cards and the thief's know a lot of people do this
