While we are in public-service-announcement mode: I believe that the above protections are still a lot smaller for debit cards than credit cards. You still have $50 limit on liability with debit cards, but you must report the theft very quickly indeed and the thief is emptying your personal account in the meantime:
In defense of debit cards, in the event you do lose it and someone's emptying your account, your bank should still restore your funds after the theft. I say this because it happened to my wife; Chase's fraud prevention kicked in after about $300, all of which was refunded as soon as she figured out what had happened.
It has actually been that way for awhile. Back about 9-10 years ago someone used my wife's debit card number and after reporting it the bank restored the funds.
I lost a little over £1000 from my debit card once; the bank did refund it but it took 5 internal forms, a police fraud report and a month to get the money back.
It's worth noting that the mere _existence_ of a debit card on a checking account still opens a fraud vector, even if you never use it. If the physical card is stolen, or the bank has a security breach where the number is obtained, those are both enough information to make fraudulent transactions. Of course, using a debit card will greatly enlarge the attack surface, but not using it does not make you immune.
Back before the "cvv" number on the back of the card you could download a bit of software of the net that would generate random account numbers with valid ICA/BIN and check digit. You just picked the name of the bank you wanted the card to appear to be from.
http://banking.about.com/od/checkingaccounts/a/stolendebitca...
This is why I never use a debit card for anything.
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