Just one carelessly thrown away credit-card slip can open the door wide for a criminal.
The credit-card number is all he or she needs to order luxury goods or expensive pornographic services via the Internet. No other type of crime is flourishing in Germany as widely as fraud involving plastic money.Germany’s Federal Criminal Investigation Office reported more than 55,000 such cases in 2000, a rise of 54 per cent on year. Nevertheless, new security techniques are still being awaited despite a plan of action drafted by the European Union.The Internet is the fast-growing field of activity for credit- card bandits.German market leader Eurocard attributed more than one quarter of the 22 million euros (19.6 million dollars) in fraud damage which it suffered in 2000 to Internet – and the trend is growing.Credit-card fraud in the worldwide web is so simple that it has overtaken the more complicated business with stolen or copied cards.At least, many of the more than 17 million credit-card holders in Germany do not suffer much financial disadvantage; the issuing banks or the credit-card companies accept liability for losses exceeding 51 euros.For years, in turn, the losses were cheaper for them to carry than to introduce new security characteristics.Most cards did not carry passport photographs. The biometric characteristics, such as fingerprints, now being discussed for ID cards were way off into the future.Criminal investigators have for years been demanding in vain that the cards no longer be sent out by mail, thus easily becoming booty for thieves. Eurocard says cards which get lost in the mail lead to costs of a modest 1.34 million euros a year.Apparently a move towards more security started only because of clients’ scepticism about paying with plastic.Last autumn in Frankfurt, Eurocard introduced its Internet security solution UCAF/SPA to assist the clients’ Internet programs and dealers’ software to mutually recognize each other.The client is able to identify himself even at a computer or cellphone he doesn’t normally use by means of a so-called plug-in. Eurocard plans to guarantee online dealers payment for transactions settled via this security system from April 1 this year.However, clients will have to wait even longer for better- protected plastic cards.According to an international action plan, the cards are first supposed to be equipped in 2005 with computer chips that cannot be scanned as easily as technologically more-than-30-year-old magnetic strips.The card companies are promising themselves economic benefits too: additional services, such as bonus programmes could be offered.They are still declining to state an exact date for the issue of the first chip cards. However, the first scanners are supposed to be installed this year.
