Credit Card Skimming May Hit Your Credit

The problem of credit card skimming is now the cause for international losses of over one billion dollars a year.This credit card scam is common in Latin America as well as Europe and Asia, and now it is starting to be seen in the United States.

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.That store employee may also be swiping your card with a small machine known as a skimmer as well as using it to pay for your purchase; this skimmer takes your information from your card and stores it in this machine’s system to use fraudulently.The skimmer can retain the information on hundreds of debit and credit cards and then it is used by unscrupulous people to print counterfeit 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.The skimmers of the past were huge machines that had to be hidden under the counter and this made it harder to accomplish this type of  theft.Some of the technological advances of the past few years has made it a possibility for these skimming machines to be hand-held and thus, invisible to the unsuspecting customer.The skimmers may be purchased much too easily over the internet for around three hundred dollars, but the credit card producing machine is more expensive, coming in at about five thousand to ten thousand dollars.

Another form of this scam can be done by pulling information directly from the credit card terminals; this is done when a skimmer bug is placed into the terminal and later retrieved with credit card information on it.The older terminals are the only ones which can be violated in this way, however, the onset of new credit card terminals has alleviated much of this bugging.

The credit card thieves will quickly skim the information they need from your card’s account and then begin to make their purchases with your credit card number.Much of the credit card fraud is committed through using the internet for purchases because of the increased popularity of online shopping. 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 cardholder is most times just held responsible for up to fifty dollars of the total amount charged on the card, but the real victim in this crime is the merchant who had the employee who did the skimming.After the skimming is discovered the merchant has to pay for the cost of the investigation and is one hundred percent responsible for the losses caused by the criminal activity and is also at risk for the loss of the merchandise.The money used by the credit card companies to offset the cost of investigating charge-back claims by their customers, comes from the investigation fees paid by consumers and businesses.

Before beginning a criminal investigation into this skimming activity, the ones who commit this scam know that a purchase must be made amounting to at least two thousand dollars.

Visit JSNet.org for more information on credit cards and various credit card articles on how to protect your credit cards from fraud.