[thelist] Re: Shopping Sites, Credit Cards

[Techwatcher]

Hi, Keith and others --

> In fact, this kind of internal "employee" theft accounts for more
than half
> of all credit card theft, offline and online. This kind of theft is
> epidemic in mail/order-telephone/order businesses and becoming more
> widespread on websales.

You are absolutely correct; I know because my father worked about 35
years for IBM, and was one of their representatives to an international
standards committee working to make CC usage safer. Insider theft is
indeed the largest risk, by a very large majority.

> When paying with PayPal
> the "merchant site" NEVER gets to see the buyer's credit card info.

Further, all professional risk assessment starts from the basic premise
that a risk/benefit analysis is the only reasonable way to proceed.
(Yes, you can prevent kidnapping by remaining entirely inside a
saferoom in your home at all times; you just don't want to live that
way!) And the real risk of giving out your personal financial
information (esp. CC numbers) is that there are just so many of them in
one place! So, the crook thinks, who cares if it takes 4 years and
$1,000,000 to crack the code, when the payoff is $10,000,000! That's
why I always warn people not to use CC online. It's the aggregation
factor -- which is so much higher online than off.

Cheers --
Carol Stein
techwatcher at accesswriters.com