Credit Card Section

Credit Card Fraud - 3 Really Sneaky Tricks To Be Aware Of & How To Better Protect Yourself

June 2006

Never discount the sneakiness and slyness of the Credit Card fraudsters. CC fraud is similar to a leaking dyke, plug six holes and seven new ones open up.

Credit Card companies are often having to fight a reactive war rather than a proactive one, always closing the loopholes after the scam becomes apparent. But these 3 scamming tricks prove that however good the CC companies are with security the first line of defence must be with ourselves and how we guard our cards.

Credit Card Sneaky Trick 1

You’re paying for something in a shop or petrol station etc
Your card is swiped and the assistant places it on the counter while waiting for authorisation
The assistant looking bored get his/her mobile phone out and starts playing around with it
Little do you know that what they’re actually doing is taking a photo of the card using the phone's in built camera (these days the lenses are high quality)
All the assistant has to do now is flip the card over when checking the signature and make a mental note of the 3 digit verification number on the back

Verdict - Chip & Pin in the UK is a safeguard against this but only to a certain degree. Again though this strategy is best utilised by the scammers in foreign countries so whenever you get your card out be aware of what’s happening around you.

Credit Card Sneaky Trick 2

The bill comes when you’re eating at a restaurant and you hand over your credit card
The waitress takes the card away, brings back the receipt for you to sign and hands you your card back
The trouble is that the card handed back was not yours, just one that looked like it
It was actually someone else’s card that was either stolen or expired
This is a classic scam pulled by service staff who have a whole collection of different cards so they slip in one that resembles yours
And even if you notice it’s not your card when in the restaurant all the waitress does is apologise for the mix up using the excuse that the 'cashier must have got them mixed up' etc

Verdict - With Chip & Pin this scenario is highly unlikely but C&P is only in the UK. This scam is a classic one that’s pulled in foreign countries so whenever you pay for anything with plastic always check that the card you get back is actually yours

Credit Card Trick 3

You go to a gym or sports hall placing your stuff in a locked locker
When finished you noticed that the locker is now unlocked which is funny because you were sure that you locked it etc
When checking your valuables everything is in order, credit cards are there and so is all your money
A few weeks later your Credit Card bill arrives for £3,000!
A call to the CC company says that everything is in order, the goods were ordered legitimately and the card has not been reported stolen
So what happened? The locker was broken into and a credit card was replaced with a stolen card from the same bank or card issuer that looked exactly the same

Verdict - Because the card was not reported stolen the bill stands with little recourse from the Card company. We admit though, the risk of this happening is extremely low and does depend a lot on how often the credit card is used by the owner. For example, if he or she tried to use it to fill up with petrol on the way back from the gym the scam would have been caught there and then.

The Solution To These Fraud Problems

Use the internet to keep tabs on your credit card account. This is really imperative these days because the thieves and scoundrels are far more devious than we all think. By using the internet we can keep track of exactly what’s happening with our cards and start to take action (if anything happens) a lot quicker than waiting for the monthly statement via the post.

Personally we have a large number of credit cards and so logging into 6+ websites with all those stupid usernames, passwords & other secret words can be tedious. Therefore we use the excellent service offered for free by the First Direct internet bank (you don’t have to have an account to use this facility)

It’s called Internet Banking Plus and we wrote an article on what it’s all about - Read the article here

Basically, you enter all your credit card login/usernames along with any other financial accounts you might have. Then when you want to check on them just enter the one username and password and it gives a quick snapshot of your balances. The software is resident on your computer and all your usernames/passwords are encrypted.