With the ever increasing threats of Identity Theft, users of credit cards with the magnetic strips that do not contain the smart chips such as many of those now used in Europe are easily scammed either online or at retailers. Such has has been the case with the recent scam that retrieved millions of credit cards numbers in the US from shoppers at Target.
Since Europe switched to Smart cards making it much more difficult for scammers to illegally use credit cards the percentage of these type of scams has dropped dramatically.
All banking and credit cards issuing agencies within the US should be required to move to the newest Smart Card technology, protecting not only US consumers, but the banking and credit agencies as well from tens of millions in losses.