--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [decline in credit card fraud] > Interesting statistics.
[...] > But these are still considerable numbers, [...] I totally agree. And I would just like to make a quick point: the credit card companies (especially Visa/Mastercard) have been very agressive in fraud prevention in the last ten years. And I don't mean algorithms that detect unusual activity and flag a card, thereby prompting your bank to call and verify that that the charges are good. They've been doing that for years, if not decades. No, I mean literally detective work -- tracking people down, having their sites closed and bank accounts freezed and actually pushing to have people prosecuted. They have been quite active, trying to recruite people in the law enforcement community and offering handsome salaries. The whole thing works based on the premise that there are a lot of small-time gangsters at any given time but only a few big fish. And if you can increase the cost of doing business (either in terms of making credit fraud more expensive or in terms of increasing the likelihood to get caught) you can basically justify the expense of running a big anti-fraud unit. But, in a way, that's only dealing with the symptoms, whilst at the same time ignoring the root cause of the problem. You're only making it less attractive to commit credit card fraud. You are, however, not making it harder. That's why I believe the credit cards companies will indeed have a good, long look at smartcards. Probably not tomorrow or next week but in the near future. -Jörn __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
