Credit Card Fraud: How Criminals Use Your PIN Number
Author: John Published Under: Information Security
Credit card fraud is very common and affects millions of people all over the World. One of the most serious types of credit card fraud occurs when the criminal not only has the credit card details, such as card number and expiration date, but also the Credit Card PIN number. This is because by having the PIN number, the criminal is no longer restricted to making purchases, but instead can simply begin withdrawing money from ATMs, which presents much less risk.
There are many ways that a criminal can obtain a Pin Number and once they have it, they often goto the nearest Pin and begin siphoning money from the victims account.
Most credit cards have a limit, which only allows a certain amount of money to be withdrawn each day. To get around this, criminals will wait until close to midnight to withdraw money, because this limit will usually reset at midnight. This way, if they make one withdraw at 11:59pm and one at 12:01AM, they can effectively make two days withdrawals at the same time.
Another method is for the criminal to make a withdraw in the maximum amount, but instead of removing all of the money, leaving a few pieces in the machine. After a set period of time, the machine will suck the money back in and if done properly, reset the victims withdraw limit, as if no money has been taken out. This is called reversal fraud and relies on the fact that many ATMs can not actually count money that is being taken back in, but only when it is being first distributed.