Holidaymakers urged to watch your credit cards

BRITISH travellers are being advised to take extra care of their credit cards while on holiday this summer because of a marked increase in ATM cash machine fraud in a number of key destinations. Over the past few years in Majorca we have seen a marked rise in the number of criminal gangs, quite often made up of Eastern Europeans, using state-of-the-art technology to clone credit cards at ATMs. TSB says it has seen a surge in overseas fraud following the introduction of the chip and pin payment system. Criminal gangs are now cloning the magnetic strips on debit and credit cards and using them to withdraw cash at machines in a third country.
The problem came to light in recent weeks as a result of its fraud monitoring - it is being highlighted ahead of the busy summer holiday season.
It is thought fraudsters may use the cards in ATMs in a different country from where the holiday maker has come from and where the fraud was carried out because they still take information off a card's magnetic strip, rather than its microchip, which is much harder to copy. It may also take longer for ATM transactions made overseas to show up as unusual spending patterns on banks' security systems and longer for the victims to spot.