The Latest Dangers Over Credit Card Skimming

Credit card skimming is causing an international problem which accounts for losses of over one billion dollars a year. In the United States this type of credit card scam is now being used although it is more commonly implimented in Latin America, Asia and Europe.

This credit card scam is easy to run, as it can take place when you give your credit card to a store employee to purchase something. When the store employee swipes your card for the purchase, it could also be swiped across a small machine in their hand called a skimmer which stores the information on your card into its own system for the store employee to use to steal from you. The information in this skimmer is used by crooks to produce counterfeit cards from the hundreds of debit and credit cards it has information on.

The skimmer is capable of gathering the information on hundreds of cards; then information is downloaded into a computer to be emailed to skimming rings that are at work worldwide. About ten years ago it was not as easy to accomplish this fraud as it can be today, because the skimmers were large, bulky machines which had to be hidden under the counter in the store.

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 retrieved with the credit card information on it. With the introduction of the newer credit card terminals, this bugging scam is no longer the problem it can be with the older terminals which are much easier to violate in this way.

When the credit card information thieves have gained all the pertinent facts from you they will begin shopping for the things they want and charge it to 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 cards validity is checked by the information thieves through their purchase of several low cost items from various websites to find out if the card is actually an active one.

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 activity 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. The investigation fees paid to the credit card companies by credit consumers and businesses they frequent is the revenue used to offset the costs of investigating charge-back claims by their customers.

Those who do this skimming scam operation know that a purchase of at least 00 must be made before a criminal investigation can begin.

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