With unlimited guesses and a three-digit code, even a crook working entirely by hand could try all the possibilities with a few hours.
The payment processor mustn’t allow too many guesses at your CVV.The security usefulness of the CVV depends on it never lying around where it could subsequently fall foul of cyberthieves. The vendor mustn’t store your CVV after the transaction is complete.Of course, there are numerous caveats here, including: The CVV therefore acts as a very low-tech barrier to card-not-present fraud, because most websites also require you to type in the CVV, which is not stored on the magstripe and therefore can’t be skimmed. Skimming is where the crooks use a booby-trapped card reader, for example glued over the real card reader on an ATM, or cunningly squeezed into the card slot on a payment terminal, to read and record the magnetic stripe on your card.Įven if you have a Chip and PIN card, the magstripe contains almost enough information for a crook to convince a website they have your card.įor example, your name as it appears on the front of the card, the “long code”, usually 16 digits across the face of the card, and the expiry date are all there on the magstripe, ready to be copied surreptitiously and used on the web.
