It’s hip2b2

I just read about the Citibank PIN Scandal, the good news is that the report only states that the problem is isolated mainly in the US, Canada and Russia. The report also states:

Citibank has put a transaction block on an unspecified number of Citi-branded MasterCard debit and credit cards used in three countries because of fraudulent automated teller machine (ATM) cash-withdrawal activity, the company said in a statement yesterday.

In the article Citibank admits,

“Recently, we became aware of fraudulent ATM cash withdrawals on Citi-branded MasterCard credit and debit cards used in three countries on customer accounts that had been possibly compromised in previous retailer breaches in the U.S.,” the company said. “To protect customer accounts that were affected, we placed a special transaction block in those three countries on PIN-based transactions.”

This looks like your usual card skimming activites where the PINs of cards are harvested from retailers who are not careful (or using vulnerable equipment and network setups). Is this happening in the Philippines too? Are we safe to use our Citibank PINs? Good thing most people here do not use these PINs. Or so I think?

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 12th, 2006 at 1:34 am and is filed under Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.