Originally Posted by scwam

I'm not sure that you realize what is encoded on the strip. I used to work in a risk control department years ago and at that time they were implementing algorithms embedded into the strip. I think it was in track 2 iirc. We could tell if the card (counterfeit) at that time had all the information encoded unique to that card. In the cases I was dealing with customers having cards counterfeited out of Kowloon, Hong Kong. We could see all the data (in most cases) transmitted from track 1 and/or track 2. We had a high rate of assumption of counterfeits based on the lack of information in those tracks.

My point is that someone reviews this info when a program kicks out these factors and you would probably be getting a lot of calls from the fraud dept. Yeah, nobody in China really seems to care about counterfeits. I've seen a 3-track encoder for sale at some mom-and-pop ghetto electronics store in China. But the banks will certainly take notice.