A little background, as reference for my next post:
A skimmer is a battery-operated device smaller than a deck of cards with a slot for swiping credit cards. It reads and stores data embedded in the magnetic strip on the back of the card. Restaurant waiters are the typical recruit, given the contraption and requested to swipe each credit card as they take customers’ payments. At the end of the shift, the data collector shows up with a computer and downloads the skimmer’s memory, which might hold the information from a hundred or more cards.
This is effective data collection; and the waiters—for the data collector solicits many of them—may not even understand the purpose of the exercise for which they receive a nice little tax-free chunk of change. Restaurant and service station employees are reportedly earning over $100 for each credit card they skim.
Meanwhile, the customer has no way of knowing that his credit card has been skimmed. Some privacy advocates and security experts recommend that you never let your credit card out of your sight. I find this advice impractical to the point of impossible, but it’s a question of compromise: convenience in exchange for risk. Each of us must decide where to live along that scale. While I might hand my credit card over to a waiter for processing, you might decide to follow him to the charge machine and supervise the transaction.
Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Nine: You’ve Got a Criminal Clone
…¢ …¢Â …¢Â Yeah. That was then. Wait ’til you read about now!
Aren’t our cell phones soon going to have the ability to hold our lives? From turning on our cars and our house lights to being used as our credit cards?
I personally trust the waiter/clerk and to such a degree, I would never supervise him with my card.and I’m surprised to learn it the law in Barcelona!. Is this type of crime on the rise and were? I to patiently await the next post.
In Barcelona (so I guess perhaps in Spain in general), the law says that restaurant waiters must process credit card payments at your table, in front of you. I asked a waiter a question as we were paying once (at Flo – we should go there one day when the crises eases up), and he told me it’s the law. If I ate out, or if I used a credit card more than about once a month, I could report more….
Awaiting the next post!