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Hide your credit card, cyber criminals only a swipe away
It is a palm-sized, state-of the-art gadget and presently the subject of an alert issued to the public by the Noida police, reports Abhishek Sharan.
It is a palm-sized, state-of the-art gadget and presently the subject of an alert issued to the public by the Noida police.
According to Noida police, cyber-savvy criminals are now frequently using a magnetic stripe reader and writer to fleece credit/debit card users.
It is a computer device that decodes unique identification data stored on the magnetic strip of a credit or debit card with a swipe and transfers the information to another card.
“The usage of MSRW to dupe cardholders is a new-age crime against which we have issued an alert,” said Deputy Superintendent of Police R.N. Mishra.
“We have received up to a dozen complaints from local residents about the theft of their credit and debit card data. Our probe revealed this was done with the help of MSRW machines,” added Mishra.
The police arrested several people for the illegal use of MSRWs to cheat cardholders.
Of them, three names — Shahnawaz Khan alias Tinku, Shabbir Khan alias Praveen and Mohammed Afaque alias Raheesh — stood out.
The suspected trio allegedly revealed that they were using MSRW gadgets to illegally use credit and debit cards since “two years”, according to Sector 39 police’s station house officer Anil Samaniya.
The police have sounded an alert for the alleged mastermind, Sajid Khan, said Samaniya. “Sajid, who is brother of Shahnawaz, is very proficient in the art of cyber crime and instructed the three men,” according to Mishra.
