Paying petrol bill with your card? Watch out

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DELHI: Hackers around the world are getting innovative. From skimimng and cloning your credit card, to making fake sites; from using stolen cards on them to using new online trading models, the cyber thieves are working overtime to hack into your bank account. If you think that giving your credit or debit card to a petrol pump attendant or a restaurant waiter is safe, think again. Chances are that it would be ‘skimmed’ and ‘cloned’ into multiple cards by the time you reach home, warn security experts. Card thieves are using magnetic stripe readers and encoders which are easily available in the market for $250-$600. While a card reader can read the data on the magnetic band of your credit or debit card, an encoder can encode it on to any plastic card with a magnetic band, even a normal hotel room key. Also Read à SBI credit cards business reports Rs 150-crore loss à More Indians preferring to defer credit card payments à Is penny spent on your credit card penny earned? à Indians get elastic with plastic money Says network security management company Appin’s founder director, Rajat Khare, “All credit cards can be cloned by simply inscribing cards with a similar magnetic band just like a hotel number is fed into a magnetic room key. These kind of card frauds are becoming common.” Banks are advising customers to subscribe to mobile alerts. ICICI Bank card products head Sachin Khandelwal said, “We have a 45% market share with about 8.5 million credit cards in the market. The percentage of card frauds is low at about 4 basis points of all transactions. Nevertheless, we shoot an SMS alert for every transaction above Rs 2,000 to all our customers. Skimming of credit cards is generally done when a customer places a mail or phone order transaction.” In additions to mobile alerts, HDFC bank also provides an extra security layer for all credit and debit card customers. Through this facility, the cardholder can create his own additional password, which provides an additional security layer for all On-line transactions, said HDFC Bank credit card marketing head Parag Rao. Another kind of credit fraud happens even before a new card has been received from the bank. If you have just received a new credit card from the bank, but discover that it already has a charge attached on it, don’t be surprised. Credit card number generators are freely available online (on sites like http://www.brothersoft.com) which claim to generate card numbers of various companies starting from ‘5’ (Master Card) or ‘4’ (Visa) or other digits. It also generates 13, 16, 18 or 19 digit card numbers. These generators use the same algorithms like `Luhn formula’ used by government agencies and banks to generate numbers.