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Credit Card Pranks

An entertaining article on the security — or lack thereof — of credit card signature checking. I've now had this emailed to me twice in all seriousness, so I'll take a moment to play Snopes and point out that it's not (entirely) real:
  • It's on ZUG, a comedy site, "the world's only comedy site", in fact.
  • Most of the receipts given as examples are from restaurants, the employees of which don't see your signature until after you've left
  • The author quotes "ZUG reader Fronzel Neekburm".
  • All a business really needs is your credit card number; the only time a signature comes into play is if you later dispute the charges with your credit card company
  • He's a really lousy tipper. Come on, $1.00 on a $7.90 tab? That's 12.7%. Maybe his servers were too busy grumbling about their tips to notice the goofy signatures.
It's definitely possible to get away with signing your charge card slip with a goofy signature, which is not at all surprising to anybody who has ever bought anything over the internet or by phone without signing anything at all.
By Periodik Labs on June 21, 2005 8:56 AM |

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