Author: Hemal Ashar
03 May 2008
Two types of credit card frauds were brought to light recently. In one of the frauds, a South Mumbai resident was on a social visit to Ahmedabad when he received a mobile alert that the available credit limit on his card was lower than his purchase value.
A transaction had taken place in Angkor Vat (Cambodia) for Rs 62,000 (1,500 US dollars) on ‘his’ card.
The gentleman in question had his credit card with him and had never in his life visited Cambodia.
The Barclays Bank, after pressure and the case appearing in the news, agreed to reverse the transaction, but it was only after it appeared in the press that they were moved to do something about the matter. Till then, the customer had been bounced from one executive to another, at the new fangled call centres with their polite, monotonous, robotic answers. The card in question had obviously been duplicated and the computer only recognised the ‘card number’, which seemed to be the same as the one on the original owner’s card.
Some time ago, a city resident was accused of buying a card-duplicating machine from the internet. The gang then befriended a waiter in a Juhu hotel, who would swipe credit cards on this machine. The data was downloaded on to a computer, the owner’s details obtained and fraudulent cards obtained to make transactions. In card fraud parlance this is known as Counterfeit Card Fraud or skimming. In this case, the city police moved in and caught the fraudsters.
A quick google search reveals that credit and debit card frauds seem to escalate every year. Cyber-savvy criminals are finding inventive, new ways to duplicate cards.
Through Internet frauds (the classic one is the e-mail fraud, where e-mails appear usually from Nigeria asking people to reveal their bank details and send money) and mobile phone crimes, calls made from duplicated SIM cards and cell phones used in terrorism, including those used to detonate bombs, criminals have proved that they can easily keep up, outstrip and manipulate evolving technology. It is not just an empty mind, but also a tech-savvy one that can be the devil’s workshop. It makes one yearn for a world, where the telephone was a humungous instrument with its receiver trailing on a wire, the ‘net’ was something associated with fishing and plastic meant plastic buckets in bathrooms and plastic smiles at swish parties, no plastic money. The age of innocence may not have been pristine, but it was less complicated than the age of convenience.
03 May 2008
Two types of credit card frauds were brought to light recently. In one of the frauds, a South Mumbai resident was on a social visit to Ahmedabad when he received a mobile alert that the available credit limit on his card was lower than his purchase value.
A transaction had taken place in Angkor Vat (Cambodia) for Rs 62,000 (1,500 US dollars) on ‘his’ card.
The gentleman in question had his credit card with him and had never in his life visited Cambodia.
The Barclays Bank, after pressure and the case appearing in the news, agreed to reverse the transaction, but it was only after it appeared in the press that they were moved to do something about the matter. Till then, the customer had been bounced from one executive to another, at the new fangled call centres with their polite, monotonous, robotic answers. The card in question had obviously been duplicated and the computer only recognised the ‘card number’, which seemed to be the same as the one on the original owner’s card.
Some time ago, a city resident was accused of buying a card-duplicating machine from the internet. The gang then befriended a waiter in a Juhu hotel, who would swipe credit cards on this machine. The data was downloaded on to a computer, the owner’s details obtained and fraudulent cards obtained to make transactions. In card fraud parlance this is known as Counterfeit Card Fraud or skimming. In this case, the city police moved in and caught the fraudsters.
A quick google search reveals that credit and debit card frauds seem to escalate every year. Cyber-savvy criminals are finding inventive, new ways to duplicate cards.
Through Internet frauds (the classic one is the e-mail fraud, where e-mails appear usually from Nigeria asking people to reveal their bank details and send money) and mobile phone crimes, calls made from duplicated SIM cards and cell phones used in terrorism, including those used to detonate bombs, criminals have proved that they can easily keep up, outstrip and manipulate evolving technology. It is not just an empty mind, but also a tech-savvy one that can be the devil’s workshop. It makes one yearn for a world, where the telephone was a humungous instrument with its receiver trailing on a wire, the ‘net’ was something associated with fishing and plastic meant plastic buckets in bathrooms and plastic smiles at swish parties, no plastic money. The age of innocence may not have been pristine, but it was less complicated than the age of convenience.
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