Next time you dine out, you may want to pay the bill with cash.
It's a problem that is all too common - looking through your credit card report to find somebody else has been having fun with your own expenses. And all it takes is a couple of seconds and a participant to take part in this scheme.
Credit Card Cloning or "skimming" is the process of taking somebody else's credit card info and copies it onto another card that looks authentic. Thieves can obtain your credit card details by using a small device that is the size of a beeper. Participants in this scheme swipe the card through the device, as if they were paying for their own groceries. The device then takes the information and stores it.
Just recently, a group of skimmers made close to $40,000 in fraudulent purchases all across Western New York.
Smart Chip Credit Cards prevents skimmers from obtaining vital credit card information. They may be able to get some information from the card, but not the important details. And even if they were able to steal your smart card and disabled the chip, the staff of where this person is trying to pull off a transaction will have to ask for i.d. or else they will decline the transaction.
