Eli5: How is a debit chip or tap to pay anymore secure than a mag strip with the same data on it?
In: 118
The information on a magnetic stripe is static. Anyone with a reader or skimmer can take that information, duplicate it, and use it to make purchases.
The chip is dynamic. It is actually a computer chip. The codes used by the chip change with each purchase, in a manner that is predictable only to the people that set it up. So reading the information from the chip doesn’t help you unless you also compromise the databases of the institution that set it up. But if you can do the latter, you don’t need to read the chip in the first place.
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