Is date of birth needed for a retailer to check for credit card fraud?

bubieyehyeh

PNPSUKNET wrote: »

vodafone used todo this check, if you dont have anything to hide cant see an issue.

I can see a big worry with it. With the details they could reset your securecode password, and order things using your credit card. It more a problem with securecode to be fair.

onlyconnect

sharpy2010 wrote: »

How do you know that they do?

Because it is part of (compulsory) site registration, not a field you complete for a single transaction.

There are actually sound reasons for minimising the personal data you give out. The more sites have this data, the more likely it is to escape and be used against you.

Tim

lisyloo

Do you have any more pointless issues?

I don't think it's pointless.
We are constantly told not to give out our personal insformation unnecessarily.
The more plces it exists the more likely it is to be used fraudulently.
Even if this retailer is honest, if it's in their system it can be hacked, left on a train etc.

Seems quite a reasonable concern to me.

However the advice is still the same.
If you aren't happy go elsewhere.
If you are buying a CD it's simple, just go onto the next place.
If youa re buying something unique that cannot be purchased elsewhere then you need to think carefully about whether it's worth the risk, but normally - jsut go soemwhere else.

chattychappy

Of course we don't know how the data is stored. But it's quite common for data not to be stored but either used for one-time verification - eg you supply DoB, that's offered to another provider who confirm "yes" or "no". OR it's stored but only as a hash value. (This is usually happens with passwords.)

Ie you supply the data and an algorithm is applied resulting in a value. This value is stored. You can't get back from this value to the password. If the DB is stolen, no great problem. Future verification is done by the person supplying the password. It's put into the algorithm and if the output matches the stored value then you're in.

Of course it still doesn't mean that the data is secure - they might indeed just store the DoB directly or their processes for collecting the data (eg giving to someone who could write it down) may not be secure. Just saying it's not necessarily insecure.

I'm not particularly bothered by DoBs myself. They are fairly widely available if someone wants to do fraud with them. A bit like card number/expiry date combinations.

lily89

i would of thought DoB would would be stored not only for validation of being over 1 but also to uniquely validate the person (e.g. as there could be 2 john smiths at the same address, father and son).

onlyconnect

lily89 wrote: »

i would of thought DoB would would be stored not only for validation of being over 1 but also to uniquely validate the person (e.g. as there could be 2 john smiths at the same address, father and son).

Postcode/address is better for that. It's more likely that several john smiths would have the same DOB, than the same postcode. Except as you say in families with a John Smith Jnr! But such families would be well used to disambiguating.

Tim

chattychappy

onlyconnect wrote: »

Except as you say in families with a John Smith Jnr! But such families would be well used to disambiguating.

And serves them right for being posh..