AST Digital Magazine April 2017 April 2017

Volume 11 There’s a Problem With the New Chip Credit Cards By Tracy Thompson, AARP They’ve done little to stamp out fraud Fraud cases involving chip-enabled cards oc- curred at 64 percent of merchants. Those new security chips in your credit cards aren’t helping much in cutting down on credit card fraud, partly because thieves found other ways to steal and partly because not enough merchants are using the chips, says a new report issued this week. The report, compiled by consulting firm Javelin Strategy & Research and identity-theft-protection firm LifeLock Inc., said nearly half of credit card fraud cases involving chip-enabled cards oc- curred at 64 percent of merchants who haven’t installed chip-enabled terminals. April 2017 Edition Still, most fraud cases occurred online, where merchants still depend on card numbers, expira- tion dates and security codes. Stephen Coggeshall, chief analytics and science officer at LifeLock “Card-not-present” fraud, where thieves simply steal your numbers instead of your actual card, affected 3.4 percent of American consumers last year, up from 2.4 percent in 2015. The new microchips have helped cut down the creation of fake cards, in which thieves who have your numbers simply imprint them on a new piece of plastic. The chips make that kind of counterfeiting hard to do. But as quickly as merchants find ways to control one kind of thievery, thieves invent ways to steal. “Fraud is kind of like squeezing Jell-O,” said Ste- phen Coggeshall, chief analytics and science of- ficer at LifeLock. “Stop it one place, and it mi- grates to somewhere else.” (Learn More - Credit card thieves can use a skimming device to swipe data through the cards’ magnetic strips. Courtesy of ABC News and YouTube) Overall, the number of identity theft victims rose 18 percent since 2015 — a number that repre- sents 15.4 million people and losses totaling $16 billion. (Find out how LifeLock can help protect you from identity theft everywhere they go. Courtesy of LifeLock and YouTube) 47

AST Digital Magazine April 2017 April 2017 | Page 47