Evan Schuman’s StorefrontBacktalk has an article about attempts to pursue legal action in the US against retailers who print credit/debit card numbers on receipts. Evan says the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) that makes it illegal for a retailer to print more than the last five digits or a credit/debit card number and it also forbids printing the card’s expiration data on that receipt.

I have not written about this for a while – but this is an issue that continues to bother me. It violates privacy laws in Canada to print full numbers on either the customer or retailer copies – but it happens all the time. And some print too much of it, or print the first several digits, or print them on the retailer copy but not the customer copy. When various retailers print various parts of the numbers it makes it too easy to combine them back together.

The other thing that concerns me is what part of those numbers and other info the retailer keeps on their systems. There is no reason to print or keep those numbers.

There have been many incidents where paper containing credit card numbers have shown up in the wrong place (dumpsters, alleys) or in the wrong hands (fraudsters), or where electronic records have been similarly compromised.

So I fail to understand why any retailer would risk that happenning to them. After all, the best way to protect against personal information being misused or lost is to not have it in the first place.

Take a look at the posts linked to “credit cards” in my tag cloud to see earlier posts on the subject, including a letter from the Ontario Privacy Commissioner for a year ago sent in response to an article I wrote on the subject.

We need to put pressure on retailers to get this right.

Read Evan’s article about the US lawsuits