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Using credit cards online: is it safe?
Why do online services ask for all those CVV codes and expiration date information, if, whenever you poke the card out of your wallet, all of its information becomes visible to everyone in the close area? What can I do to secure myself? I'd guess that's to protect the card company, not you.  The number of the card is guessable, but each other bit of information makes it much harder to guess (the CVV code makes it ~1000 times harder, the expiration date makes it about 50-100 times harder).  Since you wouldn't be responsible for the payment anyway, adding security for online transactions provides the company with less liability. As for the security of your information online, that's trickier. It depends entirely on the site you're using whether they've implemented the appropriate security measures or not (and, given the SSL attacks we've seen, even that might not help).  (source: I'm a web developer, and have worked on payments systems before that implemented the security mandated by the cards).  At the very least never, ever type in your information on a non-https site (there's normally a little "lock" icon that will display if you're on HTTPS instead of HTTP).