Security researchers will soon begin selling a tool that can tell when a thief is trying to steal your credit card information
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While consumers enjoy the ease at which a sale can be made with one swipe of a credit card, it also takes just one swipe for credit card theft to occur. Inside what looks like a regular point-of-sale device at the cashier’s counter or an ATM machine could be a skimmer, a gadget that records personal credit card information as you insert your card.
Hoping to put a fatal end to this type of credit card fraud, several years ago a group of researchers at the University of Florida created a device, aptly named the Skim Reaper, that detects skimmers. After some fine-tuning, sales of the Skim Reaper are poised to begin in the next few weeks.
The demand for such a tool has the potential to be very high, at a time when credit fraud is increasing at an alarming rate. A 2018 report found that 60 million U.S. payment cards were compromised over a 12-month period, 75 percent of which were compromised at a point-of-sale device.