To date, fraudsters have come up with many schemes for appropriating other people's money. It is also illegal to receive confidential information on a bank card - password, username and security code. This situation is called compromising a bank card. Is it dangerous? How to protect your savings?
Basic concepts
A compromise of a bank card is considered to be getting personal data on fraudsters to it. In such a situation, it is dangerous to use your card to purchase goods, payments or transfers, because there is a risk of losing money in a bank account.
The information that a criminal can use includes:
- login and password from an online bank, mobile application or e-wallet to which social networks or email are attached;
- passport details of the cardholder and a code word by which you can contact the bank and carry out write-off operations;
- PIN code for withdrawing funds from an ATM;
- one-time password that confirms card transactions (3-D Secure);
- card number, expiration date, last name and username, three-digit authentication code CVV2 / CVC2.
It is not clear to many customers that this is a compromise of the card and how to avoid it. Let's figure it out.
How is the theft of personal data?
To steal the above information today, many technical devices are used. They are called skimming, they can be installed by fraudsters only in the card reader. A user, having used such a “modified” ATM or terminal at least once, runs the risk of sending his personal data to criminals.
Further scammers can use this data in different ways. A duplicate of a plastic card is made using the so-called “white plastic”, that is, information from a stolen card is transferred to an empty blank. Then they withdraw money from an ATM, or write off the entire amount, making purchases on the Internet. One way or another, you can withdraw all funds from any card that has been in a device with a skimming installation. Most often, this type of fraud can be found in the countries of Southeast Asia, Bulgaria, Russia, Egypt and some other states.
There are cases of mass compromise when hackers break into databases of online stores or banking institutions. They copy information cards thousands of people. Further stolen details are sold by scammers on the "black market" on the Internet.
Any personal information held by cybercriminals is a compromise of a bank card.
What to do if you have money illegally debited?
In the event that you notice a cash withdrawal or a notification about the purchase of goods has arrived, to which you are not related, you should immediately inform the banking institution about the situation. And it’s best to immediately block the plastic card. This means that the compromise of the bank card did occur. The bank must accept a written notice from you, as well as documents confirming your innocence of withdrawing money.
How does the bank know your card is suspicious?
Banking institutions may independently by some indirect signals suspect the theft of information on the card. The following is a list of such situations.
- If you did not inform the bank about your trip abroad, and money was debited from your account in another country.
- In the case of frequent consecutive transfers or cash withdrawals.
- When your plastic card "surfaced" in a number of criminal acts, such as money laundering.
- The presence of the card number in the list of stolen, etc.
In this case, the bank will block the card on suspicion of compromise. To get your savings, you will need to reissue it or withdraw money at any bank branch using your passport.
What is a compromise of a Sberbank bank card?
In our country, Sberbank PJSC issued a huge number of plastic cards, so the information on them is most often compromised. The problem is that citizens, without suspecting it, violate the terms of confidentiality of cards. You can not show the credit card to strangers, because for withdrawing cash via the Internet it will be enough to remember the number, name and initials of the owner, as well as the number of the CVV code.
Increasingly, people began to face fraud in the acquisition or sale of goods through classified sites, such as Avito, Yula. They freely post their card details or transmit such information over the phone to a potential buyer, and after some simple manipulations by the swindler, the owner may lose all his funds. Do not take risks, do not tell the calling strangers either the number or other details of the card, and even more so the one-time password that comes to you in an SMS message. As the employees of Sberbank PJSC explain, if you transfer your card details to any third party, then you give the fraudsters the opportunity to steal money.
Even in case of loss, a credit card may be compromised. This is a very common option. But the fault in this case lies entirely with the cardholder if he did not manage to inform the bank about the loss on time. After all, even without a PIN, a fraudster can pay for purchases on the Internet with your card.
Another case of transferring confidential data may be a leak through open channels, for example, when you pay for services in public places, such as a train station, restaurant or cafe, or in places where there is free access to WI-FI. A reasonable decision in this case would be to refuse to make transfers from your card and use it to pay in questionable institutions.
Another popular way is to fake popular sites. This method is designed for inattentive users. Scammers create an exact copy of large stores or payment services, where the address can differ only in one letter. When making operations on such sites, you personally transmit to the fraudsters all the information on the card.
That this is a compromise of a bank card is now known.
How to protect yourself?
In order to prevent your card from being compromised, do not transfer information on it to third parties, do not publish its data in open sources on Internet pages, and do not use it in questionable places. Before using the ATM service, inspect it for foreign objects, a hidden camera, on which there is no bank marking. Anyone today should know what a card compromise is. This will help to avoid a lot of problems.
