Its better to do research for the local brands before swiping cards rather than not swiping card at all.. It may add a new brand name on the list of your trustable brands
I like buying local... but research wont help; paying cash will
And I dont like to carry a lot of cash, so I stomach the risk. (Plus credit card companies have gotten fairly good at detecting fraud even before you do. If you use a credit casd
not a debit cardyoure not responsible for the fraudulent purchases. At least in the US.)
Even if the store/brand is very trusted, criminals can sneak gizmos onto the payment terminals, and individual employees can be dishonest. I had my card stolen, and it most likely happened this way:
1. I paid using my credit card at a trusted restaurant or store: maybe a local business, maybe a chain.
2. My card was recorded, including the invisible data thats only present in the magnetic stripe. So either the swipe terminal in the store/restaurant was modified/hacked, or some cashier/waitress carried an extra device to swipe with and store cards. (At restaurants where they take your card away from the table charge it, theres a chance for them to do something like that. Plus, they might be using a hacked swiper and not even know itand you yourself cant see the swiper so you have no chance to notice if something looks odd. You have to trust the staff to catch on to it, which they often don't.)
3. I got my card back at the store, none the wiser, but the whole batch of stolen card info (including mine) was sold to the real criminal by the cashier/waitress, or collected from the hacked swiper.
4. The criminal waited 3-6 months, not using the info, so that by the time fraud was committed, the trail would be cold. Maybe a pattern of fraud can be detected, but even if they think they know the store where the numbers were taken, six months later witnesses and evidence are harder to come by.
5. The criminal manufactured duplicates of the cards (including mine) using fairly cheap equipment that makes fairly convincing fake cards, magnetic data and all.
6. The criminal took the cards to various other cities (or hired lower-level thieves to do it) and bought easily-sold items like electronics from big chain stores. The frauds are committed hundreds of miles away from where the card was stolen, and of course signatures are seldom checked; if the store wants to see a signed drivers license, the thief just has to say he must have lost it. My cards clone was used to buy hundreds of dollars of stuff from Wal-Mart. (Thats where at least a low-level criminal might be caught on camera, but they probably wear a hood or hat, and even if caught it may not trace back to the higher-up criminal. The guy buying the stuff in Wal-Mart probably has no idea who originally stole the card info.)
7. The criminal(s) then sell the stolen merchandise. Lots of ways to do that without being easily traced. Much smarter than actually getting a merchant account and directly charging the card, which would be caught and stopped at once.
8. Sooner or later (probably sooner) the activity is likely to get flagged by the credit card company. For instance, those purchases were in a city Id where Id never used my card before, and Discover noticed that.
9. The card company then disables the card (better safe than sorry) and the next time you OR the criminal use it the card is declined. (Hope you brought cash to the next restaurant!) Then you have to call the card company, find out why, and when they ask if those purchases were legitimate, this is the first youve heard of it! This is when the crime is finally first detected. Discover sent me a new card and started an investigation that went nowhere.
10. So the criminal can no longer use that particular card, but they have others. Sometimes even the very
first attempted fraud gets declined, but other times theyre able to make a shopping trip or two before they get cut off. Stuff to sell = profit!
11. Maybe some of the criminals get caught. Maybe not. Rinse and repeat.
