How does credit card theft work?

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I just got my info stolen today [:(] and am trying to figure out how it happened/s

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2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most probably was phishing: they try to contact you impersonating an official service, but is a scam. This contact can be by email, phone or even social networks. Lately for example I’m receiving mails where they try to impersonate an official delivery company saying that I received a package but I have to pay about $2 to get it. Had I fallen for it, and they would have my card data.

Anonymous 0 Comments

3 major methods I can think of:

– Theft of the physical card. This is an obvious one.

– Theft through scamming/hacking. If a website keeps your CC data insecurely, or the website itself is open to an attack when entering your data, or your device is compromised, there’s a problem. There’s also the scam route, trying to trick people into putting that info into fake websites etc. Once in a while you get really high profile hacks like the Home Depot one.

– Skimming. A device is installed on a legitimate card reader so that when you use it as normal, the skimmer also gets to read the card. With the advancements in making electronics smaller and smaller, this problem has been on the rise for some time. Chip cards were supposed to help mitigate this, but shitty implementations leave us at square 1 — gas pumps still not having chip even though their original deadline has passed, or cheaping out and using combo slots that do both chip and swipe in one slot instead of two, etc.