How to protect your money from card frauds?

Banking cards, whether credit, debit or store cards, can be used for a variety of purposes, but most often they are used to withdraw money from the cash dispensers (ATMs). However, despite that every card has personal identification number (PIN), the risks you are exposed to when withdrawing cash are high.

The most common forms of fraud are card cloning and skimming. Cards have a magnetic stripe and, in some cases with embedded chip where all personal information are stored. Nevertheless, the electronic devices (called skimmers) used to record account data encoded on the magnetic stripe are easy to make.

Card skimming is the practice of copying all data existent in the magnetic stripe (the black stripe on the back of the card) and rewriting them on other storage devices, says a representative from price comparison portal GayaShopping.com.

GayaShopping representatives have drawn guidelines to avoiding card frauds:

• Check for any attachments installed at the ATM, and if you see any slight movement, than avoid using the cash dispenser and inform the bank employees.
• Beware of the persons surrounding you. When withdrawing cash, make sure no one is close enough to see your PIN while typing.
• There are cases when the ATM machine is bogus, it is not the property of any bank and it is installed by criminals in a deserted area. The machine may function apparently properly, but no transaction actually occurs, and money are not dispensed, but will return a message "error reading card", "host error", or "transaction failed" etc. The machine will return you the card back, but not before being cloned.
• Trapping the card in the ATM can also be caused by a certain device attached to the card entry slot. In this case, contact your bank immediately to replace your card and/or to cancel the card, in order to prevent any financial loss.

Risks of using your card for shopping

Consumers use their cards to make payments via a POS device installed by banks.

In this case, cards can be skimmed as well, but much easily, because you offer your plastic to the employee to make the payment.

Cards can be skimmed both at cashpoint and at the points of sale. In this case, don't let your card out of sight, make sure the employee has the POS device on sight and that the card is not swiped through a different machine before the POS.

The common practice is to swipe the card through two different handheld devices, a real one and a bogus one. This way, the criminals will have your card details and personal identification number, and will be able to create a duplicate card.

Online payments, higher risks or advantages?

The use of cards to do online shopping has become a common practice, but apart from a number of advantages, they also pose high risks.

Online payments are the most risky when it comes to card frauds, because the card account data can be stolen much easier in the online environment.

Make sure the websites you make your online payments are safe and transactions are secured through SSL protocol (the webpage has the prefix https:// instead of http://).

Make sure the antispyware and antivirus software installed on your computer are updated. Don't save any personal information linked to the card, account or Internet Banking applications in your computer.