FACTA Rules Intended to Counter Identity Theft

FACTA is a federal law designed to protect you from identify theft by regulating such things as the amount and type of debit/credit card information retail stores can print on a receipt.

FACTA violations could result in credit card lawsuits with payouts for consumers. In 2003, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act of 2003 added new rules to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Lawmakers envisioned FACTA as a way of protecting consumers in an age of rampant identity theft. FACTA regulates information that retailers collect from customers, requiring them to carefully protect sensitive data.

Part of FACTA is a provision that spells out what credit card data a retailer could print on a receipt. The law came into full effect in December 2006, or 2004 for newer cash registers. This part of the law only applies to digitally printed receipts, not hand-written or imprinted ones.

One provision of FACTA is that printed receipts cannot show certain information about credit or debit cards. Without FACTA, a retailer could print out enough information about a consumer’s card that identify thieves could potentially compromise the account and go on a spending spree with someone else’s money.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, successfully stealing credit card info is essentially a “golden ticket” for fraudsters. FACTA makes it so that printed receipts do not have enough information for most identity thieves, and prevents a receipt from becoming a potentially dangerous document.

The parts of the FACTA rules that come into play say that retailers are legally required to truncate or cut off most of the numbers in a credit card. For some record-keeping and ID purposes, receipts may have the last five digits of a credit card number.

This could come into play in situations in which a refund has to go onto a credit or debit card. However, printed receipts can only use the last five digits of a credit card, and cannot print the card’s expiration date.

Like many laws, FACTA is designed to be enforced by both government action, and civil lawsuits. In this case, civil lawsuits are designed to serve as a deterrent to discourage retailers from breaking the rules, as well as to provide compensation when identity theft comes into play. The law allows for consumers to seek not only damages, but even attorney fees.

These rules may seem pedantic at a glance, but each element of them makes sense when considered. Without this law, a careless retailer could print enough information for identity thieves to piece together someone’s credit card number.

For example, if two retailers only printed part of a credit card number, but one printed the beginning and one printed the end, savvy dumpster-divers could piece together someone’s credit card number. These rules effectively standardize receipts so that there shouldn’t be enough information on them to compromise a debit or credit card from a receipt.

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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