Let’s face it, there’s always a risk that when you hand over your card to a someone, they are dodgy and they will skim your card. Card skimming is easy and that is an unfortunate reality that we have to live with. Even if said waiter remains in your presence, an advanced card skimming device can be attached to any part of the body and a nimble-fingered one can obtain your card details without you even noticing.The key point to remember is that a card’s chip is virtually impossible to clone. Cards generally can only be cloned by swiping the magnetic stripe through a card reader (I say generally because the contents of the card’s magnetic stripe can also be read from the chip but since 2008 there have been adequate safeguards in the UK against this simply being transposed to a counterfeit magstipe-only card (I won’t bore you with details)). Therefore, provided that you do not hand over your card to the employee, and that you yourself insert your card into the Chip and PIN device, there is no chance of your card being cloned. Even if the terminal has been compromised by a fraudster – in an attempt to harvest PINs, say – the terminal still won’t be able to copy the card data to allow a crook to produce a functioning counterfeit.With this in mind, I would certainly advice vigilance when paying for petrol by card late at night when you have to pass it to the employee through the window slot. This gives them ample opportunity to surreptitiously swipe the card’s magnetic stipe. Certainly, you should be extremely suspicious when said employee claims that there is a problem reading the chip and asks to process the transaction via the magstripe (a 'fallback' transaction).
Alex Weel ● 4833d