August 24, 2005

How would it feel to be able to earn in the region of £800 a minute? Ok I suppose there is every chance that you could be a premiership football player and regard this as the norm, while the rest of us can only dream of earning this in a week, but other than the footballers of this world, this is the amount of cash that we are loosing to credit and debit card crooks every minute of every day.

It’s a worrying and large of cash to have stolen and the crooks don’t discriminate from those who have more and those who are taking out to get by and are sitting in a mountain of debt, they will steal the money from anybody, as they don’t have a moral bone in their body.

The one side of credit card fraud that has seen a marked rise, is the “card not seen” fraud, where the details of your purchase is made over the telephone, on the Internet and by mail order and your details can easily be obtained by the crooks if you fail to dispose of any receipts or statements, that carry your details, from your address to your account numbers.

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With most people still unaware that their credit or debit card account numbers are on the receipt that they receive after they have used a card after a purchase. This is all the information that a fraudster will need to siphon off money from your account, by making purchases that will be charged to your card, that they will then sell on to raise cash to fund other darker practices, such as drug dealing.

To deal with this, it would be a wise investment to purchase a shredder, to make sure that your receipts and statements that are being disposed of, are unreadable and makes them fraud free.

The fact that this type of fraud as raised a third in recent years, may be down to the introduction of Chip and Pin which was brought in to fight credit and debit card fraud, but that was for when your cards were being produced in shops and stores, were a signature was needed and with the introduction of a Pin, then the chances of a crook getting their grubby paws on your number should be made harder, as you are the only person who knows it.

This has led the fraudsters to turn to “card not present” fraud, to make up for the money they are losing through the Chip and Pin cards.

With £300,000 a day being stolen, which adds up to almost £110 million a year, it makes this type of fraud the second largest target for credit card fraud, with only counterfeit credit card fraud, costing us more each year, with an amount of £412 million a year.