What can you do to prevent various types of frauds? We have a few quick answers.
Understand: The first thing to understand is that there are two types of transaction you have on your credit cards. One is card-present transactions (where you actually use the card), like shopping in a mall, or paying a restaurant bill. Second is called the card-not-present transaction, that’s when you use your card for online shopping. What this means, is that your card has the potential to be exposed to two types of frauds. Online and offline and here are a few tips that address both those modes.
Online transactions: These tips may seem obvious one, but use it as a check list to prevent online frauds.
1) Use the card only on websites which has https as starting web address and not http. Here “s” stands for “secured”.
2) Also look for a lock sign in the address bar or right hand side at the bottom of the screen.
3) Online transactions in Indian has two step authentications, where apart from using the card number and CVV (three digit number on the reverse side of the card) you need to use password a one-ime password provided by your bank and the secured access password via Verified by Visa and Master secure code, depending on your card service provider. If the website does not ask for authentication do not go ahead with the transaction.
4) Check the security certificates on the payment gateways sites. A number of payment gateways have mushroomed of late and unless you are sure don’t go ahead.
5) Avoid using credit cards online, instead use virtual credit cards. A virtual card is a new 16-digit number, generated on the basis of your physical credit cards. You also get a CVV2 number and expiry date. You can generate a virtual card by doing a one-time registration with your bank. You get a unique login and password. You will need to specify the amount you want to spend with your virtual card. This ensures your entire credit limit is not exposed to the online transaction. Read more here.
6) Pre-paid cards, or e-wallets, are an alternative.
7) Get yourself another card with a smaller credit limit, and dedicate this card for use in online transitions alone. That way you would decrease the risk of exposing a high credit limit online.
Offline transactions: There is not much you can do about frauds that happen on your physical card. For instance, when you have a meal in a restaurant, you hand your physical card to the waiter. He then moves out of your sight to the billing area where he swipes the card into an EDC machine aka swipe machine. Now if this waiter is a fraudster he could also swipe the card on a skimmer as well without you knowing. Skimmer is a machine which captures your card data, the data is then used to make clones of your card. The clone card then can be used online (on international sites, where only card details are needed and no two-step authentication) or physical transactions. Here are a few things you could do.
1) In a restaurant, walk to the billing area and don’t let your card be out of site even for a second. However, this is not a practical solution. Also, instances have been know where the fraudsters have attached the skimmer to card reader itself. Another possibility is that perpetrators have hacked into swipe machines to steal the card holders’ data. In such a case there’s nothing much you can do. On any occasion, if you have the slightest doubt that your card’s data has been compromised, simply call your bank and block the card. And, ask them to issue a new card. It might cost you a few hundred rupees, but it’s worth it.
2) Move to a chip-and-PIN-based card. This card has a sim-card like chip on the front of the card and can be used only with a four digit PIN. So, unless you punch the PIN into the EDC machine, the card transaction won’t go through. Read this. Also chip-based card, the account information is stored on the chip and that too in an encrypted format. Since chip-based card stores the data in an encrypted format, the data cannot be skimmed.
3) Also ensure that you blacken the CVV number (the three digit number at the reverse of your card) with a permanent ink marker. And, memories the number instead. That way, the fraudster won’t have access to this sensitive information.
The truth is that fraudsters are getting sophisticated by the day. So you have no option but to be careful. A fraud expert told us that the government should have banned the imports of skimmers a few years back. But, now even if they do so it is too late, there are enough skimmers floating in the market to wipe a lot of credit cards clean.
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