Having been in banking, finance, and information technology (IT) for nearly 42 years, I am not surprised by the hacking of 40 million debit/credit holders in the Target story. I was on the team that installed the first ATM in Oklahoma back in the 1970’s. I was able to “hack” the code back then during a test and drain all the cash out of the machine. I alerted NCR about the weakness in their software and they fixed it.
Your digital financial security is only as good as the weakest link in the information flow and hackers spend all their time looking for that weak link. Chase Bank has taken protective action to limit affected cardholders to $100 cash withdrawals and $300 in charges until they “fix” the problem. Oops! I can’t get my money out of my account. Well, it is “sort of” your money, but not really. You are actually an unsecured creditor of the bank. When you deposit your money, it becomes their money and a liability to pay you at some future point in time. They now owe you money, not holding your cash as most believe. Their contract with you, the fine print on the signature card you signed, spells all of this out. It is in their favor, of course. You will notice that they did not recommend you have a contract attorney review it. In their contract, they specify that they do not have to pay you on demand but have a certain amount of time to respond. This assumes that they are still in business. Are you catching on to the way this system works now?
Recently, my wife and I went to the shopping mall to purchase some items. We presented a young store clerk with a check. She was rather new and did not know how to process a check. The supervisor commented, “We just don’t get checks anymore.” She helped her take down our information and complete the transaction. Yes, it’s a hassle, but our checking account has not been “hacked”. Further, my check acts as a contract and the bank is obligated to verify my signature. Else, they suffer the loss.
Banks no longer want checks, it costs them money to process these pieces of paper. They prefer to process digital signals and distribute the work to the merchants… and the liability, if possible.
I will not use my debit card to purchase anything for the very reason stated above. I know how unsecure the overall system is. As a matter of fact, I do not utilize internet banking. Why? A hacker can place a “keyboard ghosting” script on your PC and obtain your user-id and password, then send it to himself. You will none the wiser. I prefer to have a firewall between our bank account and the hackers. It is called a paper check. It is a written contract. It is not worth the time or effort to try to illegally access our account. Yes, we are a “pain” to merchants and those in line behind us but I don’t let peer pressure cause me to compromise what I know is a legitimate exposure to financial ugliness. Currently, the financial institutions and merchants are liable for fraud, but for how much longer? They would love to find some loophole to remove their exposure and shift it to the consumer. It is obvious, they are not their brother’s keeper. It’s every man for himself out there in the digital jungle. 0100 1000 0110 0101 0110 1100 0111 0000 (Binary or digital representation for “Help”)
Yes, I may write the last check in the U.S. before they take my pen away.