FACTA Privacy Protections Enacted to Protect Against Identity Theft

FACTA is the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. It was created as an amendment to the FCRA, or the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and enacted to protect consumers against identity theft.

According to Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit California Corporation whose purpose is to advocate for consumer’s privacy rights, about 50 million people are affected by identify theft. Financial identity theft is the most common form of identity theft.

Costs of damages incurred climb to more than $15 billion dollars, and 17.6 million U.S. residents experienced identity theft in 2014, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. That group of people includes roughly 7% of U.S. residents who are 16 years of age or older.

FACTA privacy protections include a technology known as PAN truncation, or primary account number truncation, used to protect U.S. consumers against identity theft. PAN truncation prevents credit card numbers, debit card numbers, and bank account numbers from appearing on a purchase receipt.

The technology has been used universally in recent years. And it has been especially helpful to prevent identity theft when purchase receipts are discarded or lost.

The FACTA privacy protections state that “no person that accepts credit cards or debit cards for the transaction of business shall print more than the last 5 digits of the card number or the expiration date upon any receipt provided to the cardholder at the point of the sale or transaction.”

According to FACTA privacy protections, consumers are protected from identity theft when a purchase receipt is lost or misplaced as it prevents someone from reconstructing their credit card information from a purchase receipt.

FACTA protects U.S. consumers by only allowing the last five digits of a consumers’ credit card information to show on the purchase receipt. The card’s expiration date must also not show on the receipt. Wildcard characters like asterisks or pound signs may be used to substitute for the concealed digits.

Most credit card accounts are also in a sequence of 16 numbers in four groups of four numbers. And so, by only allowing the last set of four numbers to show on a purchase receipt, it protects consumers from any identity theft that could occur.

Information that may be displayed on a receipt includes the store name and location, the tax amount of the product purchased, time and date, and the item name purchased.

FACTA privacy protections also protect consumers by disallowing any portion of a consumer’s credit card or debit card expiration date from appearing on the purchase receipt. Examples of possibel violations of the FACTA privacy protections include: EXP: 03/17, EXP 03/2017, or EXP 032017, Exp. Date 03/**, and Exp. **/17.

Free FACTA Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

If you made one or more purchases and the retailer provided you with a receipt that contained more than the last five digits of your credit or debit card number or the expiration date, you may be eligible for a free class action lawsuit investigation and to pursue compensation for these FACTA violations.

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