The cyber criminals never stop, do they? From hacking to sextortion, it seems like everywhere you turn, some boogeyman is trying to disrupt our lives with a keyboard’s button and/or mouse’s click, or in this case, one swipe of the card.
The case I’m talking about is skimming. Skimming is a scam in which thieves can steal your information with one credit/debit card swipe using a device that can’t be read or detected. The devices these scam artists use today can easily fit in palm of a hand. They can even put in ATM’s and gas pumps. I saw footage this morning on ABC’s Good Morning America of a McDonald’s clerk using skimming to rip off a drive-thru customer. He ran a customer’s card twice: once through the fast food system and then through his own system. But thankfully, law enforcement is fighting back. In one case, a couple panicked because their rip-off device wasn’t in the gas pump. Yes, Instead, it was sting surveillance camera, and the couple were arrested. There has been thousands of arrest of these skimmers in recent years.
Yes, there are some things you can do. Check your debit/credit card statements and check them often. When in public, watch your clerk like a hawk! If the clerk is using two devices to process one payment, that should be a red flag. Plus, it never hurts to use good old fashioned cash. It was good enough for our ancestors. I’m not trying to scare anybody by reporting this. I just feel we have a responsibility to warn people when a dangerous trend is brought to my attention. It’s better to talk about it and never have it happened than ignore it and come home to an unpleasant surprise. So I want to hear your suggestions? What can we do to protest ourselves from skimming?