“Online shop for fraudsters” is a very interesting article about modern development of Internet crime, published today in the Spiegel.
The article is about that the cyber crime is already at industrial level. According to Spiegel, there are online shops, where potential fraudsters have a possibility to buy the stolen data for quite symbolic sum. Some vendors offer some kind of warriantee, so if the data are not up to date any more, they would replace it.
Apart from the theft of data in the Internet is often practiced so-called skimming. When skimming the fraudsters steal the data of bank customers by using special devices that manipulate ATMs. Those deviced will be attached to an ATM. It is a specific machine card reader that is hard to detect. These devices allow a fraudster to read and copy all cards in the ATMs. The pure copy (clone) an EC is not enough for the bank card fraudsters. He must also get the PIN. This will be done often with the help of a hidden video camera.
In most cases, the stolen money will be refunded by the bank, but not always. Especially you get to feel the problem when your EC-card information is stolen and then somebody steals your money.
This issue is highly topical. I therefore would like to point out how important it is to protect private data. Be it on the Internet or in private life.
