Skimming May Be The Latest Threat To Your Credit Card

By Author: Alisdair Cosgrove
Total Articles: 184
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There are losses of over one billion dollars each year due to the international problem of credit card skimming.This common type of credit card scam is happening in Europe, Asia and Latin America and is starting to be more often encountered in the United States.

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.This skimmer is equipped to hold information on virtually hundreds of credit cards, and from this information the crooks are able to produce counterfeit credit or debit cards.There are these skimming rings working everywhere in the world and after your information is put into the skimmer it is downloaded into a computer and then it can be emailed to any location in 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.

The advances in technology in the past ten years, have made it possible to streamline the skimmer and make it small enough to be hand-held and out of sight of the unwary customer.These skimmers are easy to buy; they can be purchased over the internet at around three hundred dollars, but the machine needed to make counterfeit credit cards is a much larger investment; costing in a neighborhood from five thousand to ten thousand dollars.

This credit card skimming scam is done in another way; the credit card information is pulled directly out of the card terminals by inserting a skimmer bug and later taking it out with the credit card information on it.The older credit card terminals are the ones that can be violated with this type of scam, but with the newer terminals this bugging has become much less prevalent.

After the credit card scam artists have their needed information on you, they will quickly start their shopping sprees 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 information skimming thieves will check the credit card information for it's validity is by making several purchases of low cost items on internet websites to find out if the cards are active.

The merchant who had the employee who did the skimming may be the real victim of this crime, but the cardholders are also victimized by being held responsible for up to fifty dollars of the total amount charged on their card.The merchant is at risk for the loss on his merchandise and is one hundred percent responsible for the skimmer's activities and the fees charged for the investigation.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.

The persons who are operating this type of credit card scam are aware that a purchase of at least $2000 has to be made before any criminal investigation can start.
Alisdair Cosgrove is a freelance writer specializing in personal finance. You can read more of his work at www.JSNet.org for credit card comparisons including low interest credit cards and also offers a comprehensive list of gas credit cards. You can read more about credit cards from his on site article, 'Credit cards safer than checks?'.