Visa Wants to Track Your Smartphone to Prevent Credit Card Fraud

A new Visa program offers location tracking each time you use your card and compares it to your normal operational location to determine whether or not the purchase is legitimate. Just give me a few minutes to compile a list of how many ways to say No to Visa’s proposition.

You have to opt into the service, so your banks won’t track you — at least not wirelessly — without permission.

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I wouldn't mind.They watch this stuff pretty closely and if you don't think the banks AREN'T watching you? then your a fool.

Credit card companies are already monitoring our spending habits. Try using your credit card in a different city or buy something a little different than you normally might buy - they will deny the transaction.
I recently went to England for a conference. I called Amex up ahead of time, gave them the dates. I go to use my Amex card and it was still declined. They sent an alert to my cell - but I was too cheap for international service (my company would not pay it, so I didn't use it). Good thing I had a backup card to use.
Hell, once we start using our phones for credit purchases, this becomes a moot point anyway.

Google has actually denied some of my play store purchases when I wasn't connected over my home wifi. Guess since majority of my purchases originated from there transactions from other IPs set off some red flags. Not that I mind, really.

Nothing new but overdue since your phone is like a token for multifactor authentication.

Only google should know and monetize your location information. Boy are they a jealous god.

viscountalpha said:

I wouldn't mind.They watch this stuff pretty closely and if you don't think the banks AREN'T watching you? then your a fool.

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The better banks are getting preemptive about this. They already know your spending patterns, how can they not? And they user that data to feed fraud prevention systems and while sometimes its a pain there have been several occasions over the last few years they have prevented fraudulent activity on my cards, alerted me via text message and email, shutdown the card and had a new card to me within a couple of days.

Position location of where your phone is relative to where your card is could help but if you ever left your phone at home or something that could be a pain.

So Visa wants to link a credit card to a smart phone just to be sure both are in the same place as a way to reduce fraud... hmmm let me think about that... uhhh no. Because legally speaking the most they can hold me accountable for is $50 in case of credit card fraud, and in most cases they waive the fees if it's a matter of you still having your credit card (i.e. stolen number).

Still not sure how tracking your phone will help, doesn't the vast majority of CC fraud today occur remotely/online?

I have no problem with this feature. I might opt in once I read more about it.

Why do people fight this, part of the cost you pay for CC fees that are charged directly to the seller whom in turn pushes them back to you in the form of higher costs is due to fraud. If way more in person transactions could be prevented by this it could be a huge win, on top of that it could lower success by criminals which could prevent more people from trying crime in the first place. And the up side is that you will not find yourself in weird situations where your credit card does not work or you get fraud alerts. I have found myself in this situation and its very frustrating and in my particular case a combination of a bank and visa makes it impossible to solve the problem on the weekends for unknown reasons.

90% of you have already sold out your location through your phone to Google or Apple, yet when you have a real meaningful personal gain to be had you fight it and turn it down. This sort of fear mongering is the same senseless stupidity that happened with Kinect on Xbox which damaged the entire ecosystem.

I always carry more than one card, especially when traveling, just incase one gets denied.
Track my purchase history to watch for fraud - ok.

Track my cell phone location - no

Besides, most of my cards don't even have my cell phone number, just my home land line.

rudy said:

Why do people fight this[...]

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they do because it opens pandora's box of mass surveillance. the more data there is that is permitted to be connected to other data the easier it becomes to say "heck, we already have all these databases. let's just go one more step and put it ALL together." and there you go. everyone with power knows everything about everyone. corporations and governments and whatever agencies surround them.

the lid of pandora's box has already been blown off and some people are trying to contain whatever shit flies out of it. individually, all goals of connecting data seem noble. prevent fraud? maintain national security? prevent identity theft? suuuure. conspiracy theory much? too bad that what has been considered conspiracy theories for a long time turned out to be far worse in reality.

Uh, here's a thought. Let me use the NFC as the card that way I have access to encryption, passwords, and remote wipe.

They're rolling out the smart card systems (got my first replacement smart card), I'd hope they all include NFC in them.

sfsuphysics said:

So Visa wants to link a credit card to a smart phone just to be sure both are in the same place as a way to reduce fraud... hmmm let me think about that... uhhh no. Because legally speaking the most they can hold me accountable for is $50 in case of credit card fraud, and in most cases they waive the fees if it's a matter of you still having your credit card (i.e. stolen number).

Still not sure how tracking your phone will help, doesn't the vast majority of CC fraud today occur remotely/online?

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Part of this is the bank's own liability. The more fraud they can prevent up front the better it is for them as fraud costs them money. Not that this would be foolproof and prevent all fraud but it could help.

I'm not saying that I like the idea and I'm sure it wouldn't be popular but there's just so much of this going on now that I think anyone that's really thoughtful and honest about the subject is willing to listen to ideas. Fraudsters are certainly becoming more and more innovative and willing to try new things.

temujin987 said:

they do because it opens pandora's box of mass surveillance. the more data there is that is permitted to be connected to other data the easier it becomes to say "heck, we already have all these databases. let's just go one more step and put it ALL together." and there you go. everyone with power knows everything about everyone. corporations and governments and whatever agencies surround them.

the lid of pandora's box has already been blown off and some people are trying to contain whatever shit flies out of it. individually, all goals of connecting data seem noble. prevent fraud? maintain national security? prevent identity theft? suuuure. conspiracy theory much? too bad that what has been considered conspiracy theories for a long time turned out to be far worse in reality.

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You don't fight this by arbitrarily fighting everything you see like a moron, if you have a problem you demand the lawmakers give us protection and choice. Your statements about how much is already there is one of those funny issues where 2 people can look at the same information and draw exactly the opposite conclusion. The way I see it is the bad stuff is happening no matter what and all of you fighting the good stuff are simply distracting yourselves from the real issues. People should have electronic and privacy rights I agree, but blindly fighting everything you see as spying has not done anything at all for years to give us any more rights. Why? Because you guys are distracted from meaningful change. And the end result is you kill many or most of the good things that can come of surveillance and location aware data but you do nothing to stop the bad things. Now that is really ironic. Take all the bad and get none of the good. I have been here a long time and I have seen almost no one propose or discuss meaningful laws and policies that would give consumers more rights and choice in matters, all I see is blind fear mongering and fighting everything with tinfoil hats. Almost no rational thought and demands.

There are probably hundreds of example of this idiocy. I like how people cry about google now and how it can track my daily activity but are unwilling to give up gmail. How about how everyone has to create an apple ID or google account to use their phone for most of the services but people hammer the shit out of MS for asking the same on a PC. Everyone already had cameras in their phones but they blew a nut when MS released Kinect 2 killing any traction that device could have had. Guess they cared just enough to kill someone that could bring major advancements in input but not enough to give up selfies huh?

Everything bad flew out of pandoras box a decade ago when companies excelled at compiling massive profiles of data on whom you are and everything you do and no one made a peep. Its done its over you have no privacy, no security nothing, when we finally get to the point where common people can start to feel some benefit from this spying people freak out.

I don't think I always do a great job articulating my point, let me try to clarify try to make it simple. VISA already knows where the %&$# you are because you just used a damn CC they control and must be verified by them. They know what you bought, they know who else might be buying stuff there right now. So what on earth do you think fighting this protects you from?

rudy said:

So what on earth do you think fighting this protects you from?

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Of course they know where the card is being used at any time, kind of hard not to. The concern is see is continuous tracking and storing of that data that could then be compromised.

Having been a victim of identity theft, this does not sound all bad. It's not an experience I wish to repeat. It took 11 years to clear it up. If it could be prevented in the first place, that would be great.

I don't really see a need for the tracking and no I won't be using it. If they want to use your phone as fraud prevention then give me 2 factor authentication for it such as google authenticator and it works offline, hell at least offer me that option when I log in to my account online.

The truth is there are plenty of ways to help fraud prevention but the tracking system will give them a option to get more collectable data they can sell.

Also if your credit card company keep denying purchases or what have you, you should really look into another company. I've only had 1 credit card out of 8 cause problems with card freezes and denying a charge, I canceled it after the 3rd time it happened.

Really sould be alternate 2-factor authentication. Like a Unique ID within the phone itself or a PIN.

heatlesssun said:

Of course they know where the card is being used at any time, kind of hard not to. The concern is see is continuous tracking and storing of that data that could then be compromised.

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The kind of storage and continuous tracking that all the phone makers can already do. If the data is compromised its compromised, nothing will undo that. Or we could fight for real protection and options in law to directly get at that point. IE make a law that consumers have the right to opt out of any stored data, or select how long data can be stored. But blindly fighting against this isn't going to achieve any of that. They can still store the location ever every purchase you made effectively providing a map of nearly everywhere you have been anyway.