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Credit Card Skimming Is An Worldwide Problem
By plrprousers | December 31, 2008
Losses of over one billion dollars a year are now being suffered on an international basis because of credit card skimming.This common type of credit card scam is happening in Europe, Asia and Latin America and is starting to be encountered in the United States on a more frequent basis.
When you try to purchase something in a store, this type of credit card scam can be accomplished when you give your card to a store employee to scan at the register.Your credit card may not only be swiped at the register to pay for your purchase, it also may be swiped with a little hand-held machine known as a skimmer.This little hand-held machine is set up to store the information from hundreds of debit and credit cards and the information is then used by counterfeiters to produce bogus cards.
After your information has been fed into the skimmer, it can be downloaded into a computer and emailed to any worldwide location, as there are skimming rings working all over the world.Only a decade ago, this fraud was not as easy to accomplish as it is today, because the skimming machines were very large and they had to be hidden under the store’s counters.The improvement in the technology of the machines used in this skimming process over the past ten years has made it quite easy to hide the hand-held skimmer out of the sight of the customer who is interested in making the purchase.The ease in which these skimmers can be purchased is in itself criminal, in that the machine used in the skimming process is offered over the internet for about three hundred dollars, however the machine used to print off the credit cards costs much more, an amount from five thousand to ten thousand dollars.
One form of credit card skimming is done directly through the card terminals by placing a skimmer bug into the terminal and then retrieving it with the credit card information on it.The older credit card terminals are the type that can be more easily violated in this kind of skimming process and since the newer terminals have been utilized the bugging scam has all but stopped happening.
When the credit card information thieves have gained all the pertinent facts on you they will begin shopping for the things they want and charge it to your credit card number.Over half of credit card fraud is committed over the internet, as shopping by this method is becoming more and more popular, card fraud on the internet has also increased. The internet is also used by the thieves to make certain that the card’s information is valid through the purchase of many low ticket items in order to be assured that the card is active.
The real victim in this crime may be the merchant who had the employee who did the skimming, because the cardholder is usually responsible for up to fifty dollars on the total amount charged on his card.The merchant is responsible for payment of the fees for the investigation and he also is held one hundred percent responsible for the skimming activity and risks the loss of the merchandise. Investigation fees paid by consumers and businesses recently amounted to an estimated half-billion dollars in annual revenue for credit card companies; this money is used by the card companies to offset costs of investigating charge back claims by their customers.
It is well known by the criminals, who perform these skimming scams, that a purchase of at least $2000 must be made before an investigation is started.
Visit JSNet.org for more information on credit cards and various credit card articles on how to protect your credit cards from fraud.
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