Watch Out For Credit Card Skimmers

Posted by Peter Brady on Thu 6th July 2006 at 09:00 AM, Filed in Fraud

There has been an explosion in counterfeit card fraud in recent years. This predominantly involves the ubiquitous “skimming” or cloning the data contained within a card’s magnetic strip, without the cardholder knowing.

Skimming of a card can take place in a variety of places including ATM’s (make sure the slot you put your card into is not covered by an elevated device), bars (beware the drunken night out - this is an ideal time for your card to be skimmed for obvious reasons) restaurants and petrol stations (where corrupt employees sell on data to criminals). The belief is that the more sophisticated chip and pin cards will wipe out this sort of fraud, but there is already talk of criminals coming up with ever more inventive scams.

It will be interesting to see how this battle of wits pans out in the years to come.

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