How Criminals Steal your Credit Card Information in South Africa
The loss as a result of credit card fraud in the banking industry in SA escalated to over R450 million during 2014, as per the South African Banking Risk Information Centre – that is a massive 23% rise compared to 2013.
Card fraud escalated again in early 2015, when the PASA (Payments Association of South Africa) confirmed a sharp increase in bank card fraud at food outlets – which was due to a server malware extracting the magnetic stripe data on cards and conveying that information to an illegal syndicate.
Various types of credit card scams occur in South Africa, including the cloning of cards – where a card is replicated and the owner’s information captured – and owners unintentionally providing card or banking info to criminals online.
Two techniques of implementing these attacks are:
- Actual card cloning, which is done by means of a skimming device.
- Credit card particulars being captured or stored online