
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 21, 1990                   TAG: 9006210177
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Landmark News Service
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Short

YOUR CREDIT CARDS SAFER AFTER JULY 1

State Sen. Yvonne Miller was disturbed each time she wrote a check for a purchase and the clerk asked for a driver's license and credit card and then wrote her credit-card number and its expiration date on the check.

"I thought, `Here we are setting up a situation that is ripe for fraud and abuse,' " said Miller, a Norfolk Democrat. A credit-card number can be used to charge thousands of purchases by telephone.

Miller's concern led her to seek a study of privacy laws and credit. And on July 1, a state law growing out of that study will bar merchants from recording the credit-card numbers of consumers who make purchases by check.

While the attorney general's office says the new law may reduce credit-card fraud in Virginia from last year's $4 million level, the head of a statewide merchants' group dismissed it as a "high-profile, feel-good bill" that won't stop dishonest store clerks from fraudulently using or obtaining credit-card numbers.

"It will have absolutely no effect except to get some little merchant in Southwest Virginia fried," said Lindsay U. Bruce Jr., president of the Virginia Small Business Council.

The law carries a $100 penalty - or actual damages, whichever is greater - for merchants who continue to demand the card numbers. Merchants can continue to record the name of the issuer of the card and its expiration date, however.

The new law also does not apply when a person is using a credit card to cash a check guaranteed by the card company.

by CNB