Is your credit card number safe online? New technology offers consumers added protection.IF THE IDEA OF USING YOUR CREDIT CARD to shop online leaves you feeling a little uneasy, your concern is; warranted: Identity theft is the No. 1 complaint among consumers, according to according toprep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the Federal Trade Commission, with credit card fraud Credit card fraud is a wide-ranging term for theft and fraud committed using a credit card or any similar payment mechanism as a fraudulent source of funds in a transaction. The purpose may be to obtain goods without paying, or to obtain unauthorized funds from an account. ranked the most popular method thieves use to snare snare (snar) a wire loop for removing polyps and tumors by encircling them at the base and closing the loop. snare n. victims. While no Website can guarantee that your credit card number is safe from crooks, several services and technologies are making it more difficult to use stolen numbers. One way credit card companies are protecting their cardholders is by requiring them to provide online merchants with additional information such as their mother's maiden name maiden name n. A woman's family name before she is married. Used of a surname that is replaced by a woman when she marries. Also called birth name. . That way, even if a thief gets hold of a number, he or she can't use it. The idea is to "make the cardholder card·hold·er n. One who holds a card, especially a credit card. card  hold feel comfortable that it is a secure transaction," says Bruce Rutherford, vice president and senior business leader with MasterCard Worldwide. With that in mind, MasterCard offers consumers its SecureCode service. Whenever MasterCard cardholders buy a product online, a window pops up on the screen asking them to enter a special password called a SecureCode. Once the consumer provides this information, the transaction is completed. SecureCode must be offered by your card's issuing bank Issuing bank Bank that issues a letter of credit. and merchants must be signed up for consumers to benefit. Currently, there are more than 78,000 online merchants and more than 3,100 card-issuing banks worldwide that support the service, says Rutherford. Visa USA offers its cardholders a similar capability. Verified by Visa Verified by Visa is a system used by Visa as an added layer of security for online credit and debit cards transactions. A similar system is used by MasterCard under the name SecureCode (which is completely separate from verified by Visa, although it uses the same protocol). lets consumers confirm their identities by entering a special password whenever they make a purchase. There are currently 100,000 Verified by Visa merchants and 10,000 card-issuing banks worldwide that support the service. The number of Internet storefronts that support both the MasterCard and Visa services is growing. In a 2005 survey by electronic payment service provider CyberSource Corp., authentication (1) Verifying the integrity of a transmitted message. See message integrity, e-mail authentication and MAC. (2) Verifying the identity of a user logging into a network. services such as SecureCode and Verified by Visa were cited by online merchants as the fraud protection tools they were most likely to implement this year. With Discover Card, carriers can protect their card numbers at all Internet merchants. Discover Financial Services The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. offers Secure Online Account Numbers, dummy Sham; make-believe; pretended; imitation. Person who serves in place of another, or who serves until the proper person is named or available to take his place (e.g., dummy corporate directors; dummy owners of real estate). credit card numbers that consumers can use when making purchases online. Consumers can create as many numbers as they want. Once a number is given to a particular merchant, it can only be used with that merchant. "The merchant sees this as a real Discover credit card number, because it is," says Steve Furman, director of e-commerce for Discover. "But if that number were to get hacked off (jargon) hacked off - (Analogous to "pissed off") Said of system administrators who have become annoyed, upset, or touchy owing to suspicions that their sites have been or are going to be victimised by crackers, or used for inappropriate, technically illegal, or even overtly that server or stolen then it would not be good at any other merchant." To use the service, Discover cardholders simply download a small program that launches whenever they check out online. Simply click the "Fill Form" button, and a secure account number will be generated and automatically entered into the "Credit Card Number" field of the merchant's checkout form. While such services don't guarantee that credit card theft won't occur, they go a long way toward making it more difficult to use the Internet's anonymity to promote fraud. "Today when you use an ATM, that bank will not give you the money out of your account unless you're able to identify yourself using the ATM pin," says Rutherford. "That's the type of model that we translated into the Internet world." AT A GLANCE MasterCard SecureCode Accepted by more than 78,000 online merchants To find merchants and sign up, visit: www.mastercard.com/us/personal/en/cardholder services/securecode/index.html Verified by Visa Accepted by 100,000 online merchants. To find merchants and sign up, visit: https://usa.visa.com/personal/security/vbv/index.html Discover Card Secure Online Account Numbers Accepted by any online merchant that accepts Discover Card. To sign up, visit: www2.discovercard.com/deskshop/ --T.E.H. |
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