PayPal president has credit card skimmed, uses incident to plug his company's security measures

Shawn Knight

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Staff member

PayPal president David Marcus recently spent some time overseas and as has happened to countless others around the world, his credit card got skimmed. But rather than be bitter about the incident, he took to Twitter to use the experience to promote PayPal.

In a recent post on the matter, Marcus said his card – complete with EMV security microchip – got skimmed while in the UK. As a result, the card was used to process multiple fraudulent transactions. It is something that would not have happened if the merchant he was using accepted PayPal, Marcus concluded.

A number of credit cards in the US now include EMV security chips but the truth of the matter is that America lags far behind the rest of the world with regard to credit card security. The US is responsible for about a fourth of all credit card transactions worldwide but almost half of the world’s credit card fraud takes place in the states.

That is because credit card issuers in the US require a signature as the method of approval for transactions.

Virtually every other major region in the world has since migrated to using a combination of microchips and PIN numbers, similar to those used for debit cards. Without the PIN, the card is pretty much useless. Fortunately, however, US card issuers MasterCard and Visa will be transitioning to the PIN system late next year.

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He's an opportunist. It's a cheap and dirty method to promote Pay Pal on Twitter. Obviously the fraudulent transactions on his credit card didn't cost him a penny, in fact it benefitted him.
 
He's an opportunist. It's a cheap and dirty method to promote Pay Pal on Twitter. Obviously the fraudulent transactions on his credit card didn't cost him a penny, in fact it benefitted him.
its not cheap and dirty. In a way, its rather true. Its clear that he is taking advantage of his own misfortune (or perhaps stupidity) to promote paypal, but theres nothing really false or lying about that statement.
 
its not cheap and dirty. In a way, its rather true. Its clear that he is taking advantage of his own misfortune (or perhaps stupidity) to promote paypal, but theres nothing really false or lying about that statement.
He sure was quick to jump on the bandwagon and I suppose there's nothing wrong with promoting your enterprise but I still don't like the way he did it. He's not the 1st nor will he be the last victim of credit card fraud and it didn't cost him a cent. As I said, he's actually benefitting from it.
 
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I've lived in the UK my entire life, traveled it some what and have been around long enough to remember the transition to PIN, I have NEVER had my card skimmed, He must have been somewhere pretty dodgy to have that happen.

I cannot believe America doesn't use PIN already. I've been using a PIN code with all my cards for at least 7+ years now!
 
I've lived in the UK my entire life, traveled it some what and have been around long enough to remember the transition to PIN, I have NEVER had my card skimmed, He must have been somewhere pretty dodgy to have that happen.

I cannot believe America doesn't use PIN already. I've been using a PIN code with all my cards for at least 7+ years now!

What can I say, we like retro... Hope we will catch up to the rest of the world soon.
 
I've lived in the UK my entire life, traveled it some what and have been around long enough to remember the transition to PIN, I have NEVER had my card skimmed, He must have been somewhere pretty dodgy to have that happen.

I cannot believe America doesn't use PIN already. I've been using a PIN code with all my cards for at least 7+ years now!
Aha! But remember 7 years ago card fraud wasn't as technologically sophisticated as it is today... plus you were probably lucky. No matter how secure they try make things, there'll always be a way to crack it.
 
I bet this never happened. Having worked in marketing one of the biggest schemes you can do to enhance public visibility of your product is to make out that a competing product has flaws OR in some cases make out that your own product has flaws or limitations. Take for example Ryan Air who went global stating they are a budget airway and will have to starting charging passengers to use the toilets. You can bet your bottom dollar that they never had any intention of doing this but think of the publicity that they received.
 
Since when is getting skimmed has anything to do with intelligence? Like you are going to watch what happens to your credit card when you have a business dinner with friends. Also since when is a trusty nature stupid. It is not. Stop calling people names. It could happen to you no mater how smart you are. A server could just walk away from you towards the register and tap the credit card on their pant pocket and scan it. You would not even think twice about it. You would think that that is the manner in which they walk. You would not even have the authority or cause to ask them to show what is in their pocket. I just love how everyone is pretending to be so much smarter then ordinary CEO's of a company. If you are so much smarter how come you are only able to comment on news and not actually be in it with your billion dollar company.
 
To Guest above, I don't think anyone was name calling? Or bigging themselves up as "smarter" than CEO's. I honestly don't have a clue where your coming from?
 
To Guest above, I don't think anyone was name calling? Or bigging themselves up as "smarter" than CEO's. I honestly don't have a clue where your coming from?
I suggested the possibility that maybe somehow it was his own fault that he got skimmed. didn't call anyone stupid (there's a difference between acting stupidly and being stupid), so that is possibly what the guest is responding to.

Of course, what else would you expect?
 
David Marcus on Credit Card Security …

“Marcus noted that his credit card had EMV chip technology [can’t then have been a “PreyPal”-branded card], a more secure system currently in use in Europe. But that didn't stop the data from being stolen and used for a "ton of fraudulent" transactions, according to the PayPal chief.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...9/?AID=10709313&PID=6154686&SID=1kkjpfx44hilk

Marcus’ credit card would probably be a MasterCard (as are the PayPal-branded DEBIT cards); all the “over-branded” cards of non-licensed, non-financial organisations are either MasterCards or Visas as they are the only major payments operators whose systems have the necessary dynamic linking to the *licensed” financial institutions of the world, where prudent consumers store their funds; even the clunky “PreyPal” relies on them, in the main …

Regardless, following the alleged “skimming” or whatever of his credit card, the material question would be, was Marcus “out of pocket”—like so many payees via “PreyPal” so frequently find themselves—or was he fully indemnified by MasterCard’s fraud detection systems/policies?

Then, I wonder if this story actually has any truth to it or is it simply another fiction created in the fertile minds of the gnomes hard at work in the eBay Dept of Spin? After all, Johnny Ho has stated that NFC/EMV stands for “Not For Commerce”, and that “PreyPal” is “the only safe way to pay” … and, surely, Johnny Ho would know better than the two elephants in the room, MasterCard and Visa—after all …

"Even though people think I'm an expert at technological innovation, my own instinct for technology was frozen in place in 1982." - John Donahoe (26 Sep 2007) ...

Ah, there it is …

“PayPal's Marcus did not waste an opportunity to tout his company's security benefits, saying the breach would not have happened if the merchant had accepted PayPal as a form of payment. PayPal says it does not share card or bank account details with merchants when shoppers use the service to buy something.” …

“Obfuscating card data online, on mobile, and now more and more offline remains one of PayPal's strongest value props, …”

Fortunately, we can also always tell when an eBay or "PreyPal" spokesperson is “obfuscating”—their lips are moving ...

Regardless, the newly launched digital wallets now available from MasterCard and Visa will soon enough relegate the clunky “PreyPal” back mostly to its effectively mandated place on the atrophying eBay marketplace …

eBay / PayPal / Donahoe / Marcus: Dead Men Walking ... http://bit.ly/11F2eas
 
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