High Tech Credit Card Fraud Awareness
A very interesting article from BankRate.com suggests that credit card fraud is the bank robbery of the future. From stats they quote, it could be a lot more prevalent than people think, and will probably only become more common as more crooks catch on to the new techniques for stealing.
Also interesting to note, a lot of the credit card theft techniques mentioned on the article don't have anything to do with the Internet. It's the offline fraud tactics that people probably need to worry about the most--the ones we are the least aware of!
Where there's a World Wide Web, there are criminals ready and able to perpetrate all sorts of havoc, from using your credit card number to ship dozens of computers overseas on your tab to hacking into customer databases, obtaining thousands of valid card numbers and using them to extort fortunes from their stunned corporate victims.
Internet fraud is the dirty little secret of the New Economy. For every well publicized Ebay or Egghead hacker attack, others go unreported, the corporate chiefs preferring to quietly pay the ransom rather than risk scaring off potential online customers with the negative publicity.
Nobody wants to cut e-commerce off at the knees just as it's getting on its feet. Credit card issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and consumers alike welcome the convenience of online, real time transactions.
The problem is, so do the crooks.
"The criminals are going to go where the money is, and a lot of money right now is in e-commerce," says Jeff Winter, spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service Office of Investigations. "It's anonymous and it's extraordinarily lucrative.
"Robbing a bank these days is not as appealing. When you go in and you've got cameras looking at you, you know you're going to get caught and you're only going to get a couple thousand dollars. On one stolen credit card alone, on average you can get $3,000 with a skimming device. In a lot of ways, it's the bank robbery of the future."
The way crooks steal today will determine in part how we buy and sell tomorrow.
More from BankRate.com
Also interesting to note, a lot of the credit card theft techniques mentioned on the article don't have anything to do with the Internet. It's the offline fraud tactics that people probably need to worry about the most--the ones we are the least aware of!
Where there's a World Wide Web, there are criminals ready and able to perpetrate all sorts of havoc, from using your credit card number to ship dozens of computers overseas on your tab to hacking into customer databases, obtaining thousands of valid card numbers and using them to extort fortunes from their stunned corporate victims.
Internet fraud is the dirty little secret of the New Economy. For every well publicized Ebay or Egghead hacker attack, others go unreported, the corporate chiefs preferring to quietly pay the ransom rather than risk scaring off potential online customers with the negative publicity.
Nobody wants to cut e-commerce off at the knees just as it's getting on its feet. Credit card issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and consumers alike welcome the convenience of online, real time transactions.
The problem is, so do the crooks.
"The criminals are going to go where the money is, and a lot of money right now is in e-commerce," says Jeff Winter, spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service Office of Investigations. "It's anonymous and it's extraordinarily lucrative.
"Robbing a bank these days is not as appealing. When you go in and you've got cameras looking at you, you know you're going to get caught and you're only going to get a couple thousand dollars. On one stolen credit card alone, on average you can get $3,000 with a skimming device. In a lot of ways, it's the bank robbery of the future."
The way crooks steal today will determine in part how we buy and sell tomorrow.
More from BankRate.com
posted by Dave at 9:40 AM
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