Just imagine checking your credit card details one fine day, only to find many fictitious purchases in your name, with the amount running into several thousands, or maybe even lakhs.
Well, it is highly debatable whether you can stay calm and composed after that. But this, and other kinds of credit card misuse, has been in vogue of late and though there haven’t been too many such cases, it is only advisable to follow the wise ‘better safe than sorry’ policy.
Coming to the latest incident, the miscreants used the art of ‘skimming’. Explaining this, Arindam Bhattacharya, an ex-banker and now a consultant with a leading banking software development company, says, “All your personal data is stored inside the black magnetic strip of the card. Miscreants mostly use a small keypad and an extra swipe on a scanning machine makes all that confidential information get copied. They then plant the same on plastic cards and have dummy cards that can be easily used without the owner’s knowledge.”
So, better be alert the next time you visit a restaurant. “You should personally go to the cashier instead of handing over the card to a waiter,” is how Bhattacharya puts it. He also adds that the concerned people at cash counters of shopping outlets “should verify signatures during card transactions”, which rarely happens.
Internet transactions may make you feel all empowered and on top of the world, but there are risks involved.
As Anil Ramnani, assistant manager with a bank, opines, “Every card has a unique Card Verification Value (CVV) number at the back, next to your signature. If a person knows your name, card number, CVV number and expiry date, he can easily carry out internet transactions. So, it is important to cancel out the CVV number and note it down somewhere else. This has been the most common practice of credit card misuse in recent times.”
Also, for internet transactions, Bhattacharya says that one should “preferably use one’s own PC as softwares may be installed to capture details of your card” and also “log out completely from the site once the transaction is over.” Are card users conscious enough?
Nikhil Pawar, a sales professional, avers, “I never hand over my card to anyone and make it a point to be present whenever somebody swipes it. Also, I keep a regular track of all the statements.” So are the banks doing anything to curb this menace? Says Bhattacharya, “The new age private banks are coming up with the system of virtual banking cards, where you will be given either a new password or a new card number for every transaction.”
He has a word of advice even for ATM goers: “Wait for a few seconds until the main screen comes back to avoid possible misuse.”
Well, it’s better to play it safe here.
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