The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Convenient bits of plastic, but be on your guard Law & order

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 23, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Convenient bits of plastic, but be on your guard Law & order

The cyber crime police feel that credit card fraud can be largely prevented by fool-proofing the design, says L. Srikrishna

Credit card fraud is on the rise. Recently, police came across a new type of fraud — card cloning —where the swipe codes of international cards were stolen and cards cloned to make transactions in India.

A few city banks were at the receiving end as banks abroad declined to release money against the transactions when their customers furnished passports as evidence that they had never travelled to India during the period of transactions.

As a safety measure, some banks are now replacing cards used for overseas transactions by a client travelling abroad, following increasing reports of ‘card cloning’ in the international circuit, card-holder R Guruprakash said.

At present, merchant establishments register a transaction by swiping the credit card in the machine provided by the banks. It is now being suggested that instead of just swiping the cards, the banks can provide a PIN (personal identification number) for each credit card as is done for debit cards, where for withdrawal of cash, a customer has to punch in the PIN number.

In that case, even when a person loses his/her credit card, it cannot be misused because only he/she alone would be privy to the PIN, police said.

A senior officer in a public sector bank pointed out that credit cards did have a PIN number, like debit cards, which were used for online transactions; there are also photo-embossed cards. But more than anything else, the officer added, merchant establishments should check the signature of the cardholder.

Additional Commissioner of Police S.R. Jangid said that the Central Crime Branch police received 75 petitions last year and registered 12 cases; so far this year it had already received about 65 petitions and registered eight cases.

According to Assistant Commissioner of Police (Bank Fraud wing) M Paneerselvam, many people are in the habit of writing the PIN number on the cover of the card. This was an open invitation to fraudsters to misuse the card, he said.

In Tamil Nadu alone there are about two lakh credit cards issued by various banks, said an executive in credit cards division of a foreign bank.

Bankers feel that the number of complaints are negligible when seen in the backdrop of the customer base, but police say credit card fraud is on the rise and it would be wise to ensure that the cards are made foolproof.

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