How can you use someones Bank card at a restuarant or store without having it in hand?

Question

My brother just found out that someone cleaned out his bank account by using his card at different stores and The Waffle House. He has his card, so how did they use it without having it? I am really upset about this. Nothing gets up my skin more than someone who steals!!! They didn't just do it to him though, they did it to my cousin and his friend as well. I just don't know how they can use his information at these places and not have the card in hand.

Answer 1

It's called skimming - basically, you're at a restaurant, the server takes your card, swipes it through a machine which takes all the data.



Maybe they made a dupe card, maybe they had friends at the waffle house and the other stores that let them just provide the number.



****, if they had friends in those places, they could have just WRITTEN DOWN the number, so it's really more likely they made a fake card.





I'd try to give you more detail, but I only know so much about the process myself - it's often advised to never let your credit card out of your site.

Answer 2

Actually, it is fairly easy to do. If someone were to get his account number, they could arrange to have the plastic card embossed with his number, but NOT magnetically encoded on the stripe on the back. The card could be used by anyone with an ID which matched the name on the plastic. The clerk will try to read the card with a magnetic stripe reader, which will fail since the card is not encoded, and then the clerk will punch in the account number by hand which WILL work since the number is a valid account. All of the security built in to the stripe data is simply bypassed by using a manual entry of the account number. The clerk has no way to know (without the stripe data) whether the person whose name is on the card matches the name on the account. This is even worse if this is a debit card than for a credit card. Debit cards withdraw funds from your checking account NOW, and if you overdraw your checking account, start automatically transferring funds from your savings to cover the overdrafts, and you get hit for fees all along the way, for this "convenience feature". The problem is that this all happens in so short a time, you don't know it happened until your debit card fails because you have no more money in your accounts, or you see the activity on your statement. Credit cards do NOT have this mode of failure. Sure, they can still run up the bill with fraudulent charges and I won;t know it is happening until my account hits my credit limit or I get a statement just like with the debit card, but NO money changes hands and a credit card statement with a fraudulent charge is easily disputed with the credit card company and usually can be voided if it was an ID theft thing and cost you, the consumer, nothing but the time to work your way through the process of settling the disputed charges.. Now, you know why I always use my credit cards (and I always pay the bill when due so I never pay interest on what amounted to an interest free loan for whatever charges I made), but I will NEVER, EVER, have a debit card. This is a failure of the banks to adequately protect you, for the sake of your convenience. How many times have you simply thrown your statements out with the garbage? What did that restaurant or grocery store do with the card slips they eventually dispose of? Any dumpster-diver out there scavenges these things to get account numbers and other personal data to sell to the crooks who then turn around and make the fake cards and rip you off. I hope you can get your money back.

Answer 3

The business will usually require the customer to present a card that might be the card involved... it appears to be from the card issuer, or at least from a known card issuer.



But the business can not visually see that the card contains the magnetic image associated with the outward appearance of the card. So if I put on a dummy card the magnetic stripe image from your card, it is not viable for the business to know that this card is a magnetic clone of another customer's card.



Even having your photo on the card would be no protection. The fraudsters will just put their own photo on the dummy cards along with your card's info.



The system could be made very difficult to fool if the card reading terminal were to display, from the card issuer's website, a picture of the authorized user of the card. The fraudsters could then use only cards of people who look like them.



We can also use a finger print reader at the point of sale, matching up with a fingerprint on file at the card issuer. With a bit of software we would have a strong confidence level. To deal with small purchases the card companies would likely use the fingerprint matching software only part of the time. The rationale here is that fraudsters will avoid having to be fingerprinted, with the risk that the cops will meet them at the door.

Answer 4

I don't know usually they require the card to be there...maybe they phoned in the order to go..sometimes when I do that they just take the number over the phone

Answer 5

I would make the restaurant pay that bill. They charged his account without verifyin it was him. Legal action

Answer 6

perhaps it was the clerk who he gave his card to...to pay for his meal...I have heard of that ..he has to take the card to the cashier HIMSELFand watch ...every move they make..!.too bad people can be so distrustful...