By statistical standards, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which recently wrapped up its first full year as the merchant benchmark for protecting credit card numbers, has been a rousing success. Adoption rates have never been higher. Visa recendy reported that almost two-thirds of the nation's largest merchants have reached compliance, up from 36 percent one year ago. Arguably, the bigger and better news is that 99 percent of level-one and level-two merchants have confirmed that they are not storing prohibited data, such as CW2 security codes (a three- or four-digit value printed on the card or signature strip) and PIN numbers. Payment card officials say this type of information provides the most effective way for criminals to propagate ID theft.
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