Is Your Credit Card Safe From Fraud?
July 03, 2011, By Kasie Baltes 0 comments
I barely use cash anymore. I have a few washed-out dollar bills tucked inside my wallet that likely will never see daylight. Instead, I swipe my durable debit card on a daily basis. No matter how small the purchase, I choose to swipe rather than fork over the cash.
Call it lazy, call it irresponsible, but I’m not alone. More and more people are skipping the trip to the bank and handing over that little piece of plastic for their goods. In a recent payment newsletter Nielson Report, U.S. shoppers used debit cards 37 billion times last year, significantly more than credit cards (19 billion transactions) and checks (18 billion). That is a whole bunch of transactions and exchanges of information going on. Sure it’s convenient, but are we risking our credit security and financial data every time we swipe?
New Trend In Credit Card Fraud
There are countless news stories covering debit card fraud. People lose entire savings accounts with little warning and reports of fraud are on the rise. Close to one third of Americans have reported credit card fraud in the past five years, and thieves are getting clever about scanning those magnetic strips and stealing those 16-digit codes.
Brett King, author of “BANK 2.0” and founder of Movenbank says there is an out-dated technology making our cards more susceptible to fraud.
“The current US system based on magnetic stripe and signature is fairly simple to compromise in security terms. The EMV Chip and PIN standard widely used in Europe and Asia dramatically reduces risk of fraud; however, the US has been slow to adopt this standard. If you are a US consumer you should request a CHIP-based debit or credit card from your bank/credit union instead of a magnetic stripe-based card.”
According to an article printed in the latest issue of “Consumer Reports Magazine” there’s been a new trend in card theft, and these thieves are banking on our cards outdated technology. Multimillions of dollars have been stolen from virtual skimming where a fake card reader is placed over a card-entry slot and a pinhole camera records personal identification numbers when unsuspecting people use an ATM. Pretty scary right? These altered ATMs look and run like normal, making them hard to spot with a naked eye.
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