Maine has become the first state to require credit grantors to truncate or partially obliterate a customer’s credit card number on a receipt.
As of Jan. 1, 2004, the state’s catalogers, direct marketers, retailers, banks and other credit grantors will only be allowed to print the last four numbers of a customer’s credit card number on their receipts, but not the account’s expiration date. The legislation was signed into law by Gov. Angus King.
First-time violators of the anti-identity theft measure face a $250 civil penalty and $1,000 for each subsequent violation.
Two bills that would achieve the same goal, but on a national scale, are pending in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. They are (S-1399) sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and HR-3053, sponsored by Rep. Darlene Hooley (D-OR).
The federal bills would also require the Federal Trade Commission to develop new rules for handling consumer complaints about identity theft and fraud alerts among credit grantors and credit agencies.
Hooley’s bill also would authorize credit-reporting agencies, upon request by a consumer, to post a fraud alert in their file with a “clear and conspicuous statement…telling all prospective users of the report that the consumer does not authorize the issuance or extension of credit” to anyone in his or her name without verbal authorization.
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