It happened to JoNel Aleccia of Seattle this summer. The “disappearing gift card balance” phenomenon first got the attention of media major outlets last holiday season. Why? Well ’tis the season for you to load a lot of money onto these cards, and hackers have noticed. I first reported on this problem back in August, but now is when this story needs to grab your attention. They have developed techniques to drain the value of gift card plastic while it stays (safely?) tucked away in your wallet or dresser drawer. So card hackers have turned to the less-protected gift card market.

New chip-enabled credit and debit cards are much harder to hack (or harder to clone, anyway). Why? Because, you probably have noticed, most plastic gift cards still employ those 1960s-era magnetic stripes that credit-card issuing banks have abandoned. This has been true for a while, but it’s much more important to know now that criminals are working harder to steal from gift cards. Gift cards don’t come with credit-card-style fraud protections if they are hacked, consumers don’t have any right to a refund. That’s so important it needs to be repeated. Most of that money will be at serious risk of being stolen by hackers, and precious few consumer protections are available to victims. Not only that, but with the emerging popularity of egift cards, consumers are only finding more ways to buy these easy presents.Īll of you should seriously reconsider using an alternative similar to this gift resource as well as other gift giving means. Givers will purchase an average of four gift cards worth $45 each total spending will reach $27.6 billion.

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