How is Your Credit Card Information Stolen?

Are you wondering that how your credit card information can be stolen even if you always keep your card in your wallet? Well, thieves and fraudsters can steal your card information right under your nose without your card even leaving your possession. What’s even worse, majority the time victims don’t even realize that their card information has been stolen till the time it is too late and thieves use their card data for making unauthorized purchases. Often, fraudulent credit card fees are the very first sign that your card information has been stolen.

How Thieves Steal Your Credit Card Information?

In many cases, fraudsters don’t steal your card information directly from the cardholder. Rather than, they get their card data somewhere else in the card processing chain. In this article, we have mentioned a few ways fraudsters can collect your card information.

Hacking

Do you know that fraudsters can easily steal your credit card information through a business provider where you have utilized your card for making transactions? Well, yes you read it right. Many times, thieves steal your card data by breaching a company that take care some aspect of credit card processing. With this, they steal your card information that can be utilized for making online purchases & authorized transactions.

Skimming

It is a small device that basically detects & captures your card data during a legitimate transaction. Fraudsters secretly placed the credit card skimmers over the credit card swipe at ATMs and gas stations. After that, return in order to collect the data that has been captured in the skimmer.

In many cases, fraudsters also recruit waitresses, cashier or other workers in order to skim the customer’s credit card in UAE. You hand over your plastic card to the cashier for processing the transaction & when you are not giving too much attention, the cashier will swipe up your card through the credit card skimming device right under your nose to seal your crucial card details.

Tricking

Have you ever received a phone call or text message where you are asked to provide your credit card details such as card number, PIN, or CVV for the verification purpose? Well, avoid strictly such calls and messages.

Fraudsters generally set up a trap to trick credit cardholders into providing their card details. That is why, they do call, sent text messages and email, or make fake websites to steal your card information. So, don’t be fooled by such fake texts or calls.  Also, keep in mind that you provide your credit card information only while making transactions that are seemed to be safe.

Installing Viruses or Malware on Devices

Hackers use this method with the help of computer, laptop, tablet, or even Smartphone. Well, they design software that is easily downloaded in email attachments or though some other software. These viruses sit on your devices & can leave undetected for a long span of time.

Most often, these hackers usually take the benefit of public WiFi in order to trick people into installing viruses or malware concealed as the software update. Such kind of viruses is mainly created to track the key pressed on your keyboard & they might take screenshots of your payment pages. In this way, they steal your card confidential information very smartly without even letting you to know about such fraudulent activity.

Trashing Documents in the Garbage

There is one common mistake that most of the people do is that they discard payment receipts or documents that have their full credit card number. Never do that as it will put you at high risk of theft. Be sure you always shred all these important documents before throwing them in the garbage.

Also, we would highly suggest you to register to email as well as SMS alerts that notify you for each and every transaction in order to avoid such traps. In this manner, you can easily track several activities on your credit card account & report against any fraudulent activity you spot.

The Final Words

As you can see, thieves or fraudsters can steal your credit card information in several manners and use it for making authorized transactions. To avoid getting into such traps, you need to stay alert and make the use of your credit card Dubai at the right place.