What Is Blockchain?
April 30, 2019
What needs to happen for crypto currencies to be viable?
May 14, 2019
As always technological advancements help to make our lives easier. Unfortunately that also helps to make thieves jobs easier as well. In January the Secret Service issued an advisory on a recent advancement in credit card technology called the Fuze Card relating to its use with credit card thieves.
The Fuze Card
The Fuze Card is relatively new. It was released in 2017 and looks just like a credit card but it is not. It is actually a data storage device that is capable of holding up to 30 different cards on it. No numbers are displayed and only a small screen allows for the user to know what card is being used. When a card is selected its information is placed onto the magnetic stripe or the chip.
These cards can do several things for thieves. The first is that a thief will no longer need to shuffle through all of their cards to find the one to use thereby reducing suspicion (and the chances of getting caught and having to explain why they have 30 stolen cards on their person). Also with no information on the card it can be used relatively anonymously. It allows a thief to purchase numbers in bulk and apply them to the card. If one has since been deactivated they can simply cycle to the next one.
A Real Issue or Just a Ploy?
How rampant is this? At least two Secret Service field offices are working with law enforcement to investigate incidents involving Fuze Cards. Some believe that this is just scare tactics designed to prevent the Fuze Card from taking off, others say that the same thing was said about other alternate payment methods like Apple Pay and it proved to be for the most part untrue.
There is legitimate concern over another aspect of the Fuze Card. It has enough memory and processing power to store the information for 30 cards (and probably more). Could more be done with this? Could something like this be used to take down a POS terminal or to hack a terminal? There is very real concern regarding this though it does not seem that one has been used in such a manner yet. That does not mean it couldn’t happen.
Is this just a media scare tactic and much ado about nothing? Is it advanced warning of the next major credit card theft model? That remains to be seen but it is something that merchants potentially need to keep an eye on. We don’t know if you have seen any of these yet and there is a good bet that the vast majority of users are legitimate and present no threat but all it takes is one bad apple.
