how credit cards are cloned

How safe is your credit card? Plastic cash that lets you buy almost everything by just swiping the card can also turn out to be your worst nightmare.

This is not an isolated incident. With the use of the credit and debit cards on the rise, their misappropriation has become a major worry for one and all. Credit card users in India have been robbed of crores of rupees due to card-cloning over the years.

Intl bank cards frauds have also raised taking advantages of the loopholes in the system. In many cases, Indians have used details from foreign credit cards to swipe away millions.

The offenders often get away as laws are not very stringent in India for such acts of crime. The maximum punishment would be imprisonment for up to three years.

How do credit cards get cloned?

Credit card cloning, or skimming, is a method, by which someone obtains your credit card details, copies them onto a bogus card and begins using the credit card.

Waiters, shop assistants, courier boys and even MBA graduates have been arrested in the past for stealing vital information, making clone cards and spending cr of rupees.

How is cloning done?

A device with a scanning slot can be easily procured from the shops, or even ordered online. The fraudsters swipe customers' credit cards discreetly through the device that comes with software that can store information from about 3,000 cards.

It just takes a few seconds to swipe the card and transfer the card details into this device. This information can be then be copied on to expired, blank or stolen cards to make a clone of the original card.

Such China-made data readers are priced between Rs 30,000 and Rs 50,000.

What kind of details will the fraudster get?

The magnetic strip gives the credit card number, name on the credit card and the expiry date. However, the name and address of the person is not revealed.

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