PIN it to Win It

James

Big Cash Prize if You Use Your Barclaycard PIN before 14 Feb 2006.

http://www.barclaycard.co.uk/pin_it/

On the other hand:

Barclays Plays Loose With Chip & PIN:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2005/12/14/cmliz14.xml

chriz1000

This brings up the question, how safe is Chip & Pin?
The way I’ve always seen it, what’s stopping some little runt at the local shop designing a key capturer device to plug into the terminal? Then how easy would it be to clone your card! Worse still the clone card can use it at ATM’s which makes thieves jobs 10 times easier!

Just the other day when I was behind someone in the queue for a shop I thought I would watch as she entered her pin to see how easy it would be to capture someone’s password! I could read it easily! What’s stopping me from working with the bod behind the counter, waiting in line and stealing people’s pins then getting the details from the receipt the shop worker has!

I relies that the chips are probably a lot harder to clone than the magnetic strips, but just as the chips on security cards, NTL Digital, Sky and a number of other chip related cards are, it can be done! If it can’t already you can bet there’s a team of people working on it right now.

King_Of_Fools

The chips on C&P cards are a lot more secure than those on "smartcards". I am sure it can be done but I would imagine it would require equipment costing millions of pounds rather than thousands so it would not be possible for your average card thief!

By far the easiest way of cloning a C&P card is to read the magnetic strip and copy that onto another card without the C&P flag and this will remain the case until cards stop using magnetic strips worldwide!

Thefunkygibbons

It would be very difficult to hack into the card reader, they have quite high levels of embedded security

The real issue is spotting someone's pin and then pickpocketing the card off them

aeron26

"The real issue is spotting someone's pin and then pickpocketing the card off them"

Unfortunately, that's not very difficult at all is it?

Dave_the_Ginger_Cat

So guard your PIN, encourage others to (without ranting) and you'll be safe!