File-It-Under: How a hacks can By: D.F.Skinner
Welcome to the "How a hackers can series" where we start things off with how a hacker can steal your credit card information. Probably the most devastating thing that can happen to anyone is noticing suspicious activity when viewing your credit card report or your bank statement since banks are linked to debit cards. Then you discovered the worst ,someone has made unauthorized purchases on Amazon with your credit card,ouch.How can that happen? That's the question I asked also when I was a victim of identity theft. last year.
So the question I'm sure many are asking is how can hackers come up with creative ways to steal your entire credit card information without you knowing a thing,follow along.
Hackers today for the most part are some of the most tech savvy individuals you'll ever want to know. There knowledge of computing and networks borders that of a genius. Almost all hackers are also good at writing software,working with command prompts,working with scripts and even in some cases crafting hardware. With that said,here's several schemes hackers use to gain access to your credit card information.
Phishing
Phishing is probably the most simplest and lamest method a thief can steal your credit card numbers,in fact there's hardly any technical skill needed.The bad guy simply calls your place of business,pretending to be a bank and tricks you into forwarding all of your financial information. Phishing schemes often make attempts in warning you that unauthorized activity is taken place which softens you to cooperate with fraudulent person on the phone. If by chance you receive any suspicious calls from a person pretending to be from your bank or credit card issuer,hang up the phone and run. Quickly call your bank or credit card company.
Spoofing
In Spoofing,hackers here get a little creative,meaning unlike Phishing there is some craftiness to this hack that requires some cunning skill. How spoofing works goes as follows. Hackers will create a email address or website whose main mission is to dupe you into typing in your financial information.Just like what you have with Phishing,a spoofed website or email will make claims to be from a bank or credit card company and create a fraudulent report that there is suspicious activity with your account, thus tricking you into giving up your info. The email will go as far as telling you in order to correct the issue it will direct you right over to a website which is a fake, once on the website users are then tricked into giving out account information,very crafty. You'd be surprise how many credit card owners have been duped by hackers with this type of scheme.
Web Commerce Hacking
Web commerce hacking is not the most common of all hacks,but when successful,the results can be disastrous. With web commerce, Credit card information is stored on the retail business data base for later use,like for an example what you have with popular web commerce sites in Amazon and eBay. Stored credit and debit card numbers allows users to make future purchases. Most retail stores who use a web commerce system institutes some form of 3 level encryption to thwart hackers from stealing credit information from their database. Yet occasionally hackers bypass high level encryption,allowing a great number of credit cards numbers to be stolen all at once. Retail stores like TJMaxx and Marshalls were victims of such hack years ago enabling hackers to gain access to at least 45 million credit and debit card numbers.
ATM Skimming
Remember young John Connor in Terminator 2,the part in the movie where he used a weird looking device to skim cash from a ATM machine. Well unfortunately this sort of hack is used today, these devices are call skimmers. Skimmers are electronic devices that you insert right into ATM's or credit card readers at gas pumps.Once the card is placed into the reader,it passes through the skimmer,thus allowing the device to capture your entire credit and debit card information. Usually you'll see travelers from other countries fall victim to this hack. Reason being they're usally not familiar with the design of this countries ATM's or gas pumps. To avoid being the victim of skimming, you should always carefully examine your ATM machine or gas pump. If you see any weird looking device that looks out of place,do not insert your credit card.