How Your Credit Card Information is stolen?

There are many cases of credit card information being stolen. Unfortunately for the victims, they usually will not even realize that their information has been taken until the credit card has been used. More often than not, fraudulent credit card charges are the only way to identify whether your credit card information has been stolen.

There are several measures that have been put in place in order to decrease the number of stolen credit card information such as Chip and pin technology, fraud detection, and monitoring, internet banking security measures, anti-skimming devices in ATM and many others. If you need any protection, you can search for private investigator Birmingham.

You would be wondering, how do the criminals get your credit card information in the first place? Below is the list of it:

1. Skimming

Skimming is probably one of the most usual ways a criminal can get your credit card information. The only thing that they need is a credit card skimmer. It is a small device that captures your credit card information when it was doing another legitimate transaction. These devices are usually placed over the credit card swipe at gas stations or even ATMs. They will then return at a later time to retrieve all the information that has been captured.

There are even instances where the criminals would recruit the cashiers, waitresses, or other workers to skim the customer’s credit card.

2. Hack

Criminals can steal your information by breaching the security measures of a company. These are most probably companies where you have used your credit card or a company that handles some aspect of credit card processing. Since data breaches target entire organizations, most often a million customers would have their information stolen.

The catchphrase is, businesses are not required to notify the customer whose information has been stolen in a data breach.

3. Malware or viruses

Hackers can simply design software that downloaded in email attachment or other software that sites on your computer undetected. There are some cases as well where hackers are reported to take advantage of the public wi-fi to trick people into installing malware disguised as a software update.

This type of software will later monitor your keystrokes or take screenshots of your page and sends the activity to the thief.

4. Dumpster diving

This is one of the oldest techniques that has circulated so far. The criminals would simply search for documents that have your full credit card number printed. These left you at risk of theft.

Even tho this does not happen as often as it does in the past, you have to be aware of its possibility. The best way to handle this type of technique is by ensuring that all of the pieces of your credit card receipts are fully shredded. You are shredding it by yourself, you can simply throw away the rest of the receipt in two batches.

5. Tricking

There are a lot of phishing techniques and scams that can be used by these criminals to trick you into giving them your credit card information. In one scam, you have to verify some personal.