NEW YORK— Criminals are stealing food money from poor Americans by exploiting obsolete debit cards, a new report states.
EBT cards—which deliver Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and other state-run assistance—work like debit cards at stores when buying groceries and at ATMs when withdrawing cash, but they have a vulnerability, according to Yahoo Finance.
Missing Security Feature
“They lack a crucial security feature that everyday debit and credit cards carry, a small computer chip that is nearly impossible to clone,” Yahoo Finance noted.
Specifically, EBT cards depend on the old-school magnetic stripe for security.
The stripe contains all the information to clone the card, data that can be picked up by an illegal card reader over a legitimate one at a store or ATM when a card is swiped, the report noted.
‘On the Edge Already’
"This is a really crummy crime," Justin King, policy director at Propel, which provides a free mobile app for EBT cardholders, told Yahoo Finance. "You're stealing this money from these people, my heavens. This is devastating for folks who are on the edge already."
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