11/8/05-Acting Gov. Richard Codey has signed a bill into law intended to protect consumers from having their credit or ATM card information unwittingly taken from them.
The new law, previously A2769, prohibits the unauthorized use of scanning devices or re-encoders to access or scan the encoded information on any ATM, debit, credit or other payment card.
It also makes it a crime to use a re-encoder to place the information encoded on the magnetic strip onto a different card without permission.
A re-encoder is a device that places encoded information from the magnetic strip of a payment card onto the magnetic strip or stripe of a different payment card.
The new law takes effect Jan. 1, 2006.