CVV (was: Re: bloomberg on supermicro: sky is falling)

Thu Oct 11 08:17:58 UTC 2018

(this is probably OT now...)

> I'm pretty sure the "entire point" of inventing CVV was to prove you
> physically have the card.

Except that it doesn't serve that purpose. Anyone who ever had your card
in their hands (e.g. waiters) can just write that down and use it later
hence defeating the purpose of "physically having the card". (Call me
paranoid but I usually use a black pen to make the numbers undreadable
because of this, after my card (both sides) has been photocopied a
number of times...)

This has always been an amusing topic. At the end of the day it's a
financial risk management call from the banks -- as long as they lose
less money on the current system than the cost of fraud, things wiull
not change. Of course, they try to push those costs onto others as much
as possible, but that doesn't change the bottom line.

Robert