Credit card with you, yet robbed?

TROUBLE CARD: Skimming is the theft of credit card information by a dishonest employee.

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New Delhi: Life seems to be going downhill for a pickpocket nowadays. And with the advent of the credit card, it’s not even a well paying job anymore. So is this the end of pickpockets, as we know it?

Sadly, no. Because credit cards are no more failsafe. What’s taken the world by storm now, is skimming, where it's no more necessary to pick your pocket to steal your credit card.

Skimming is the theft of credit card information by a dishonest employee, manually copying down numbers, or using a magnetic stripe reader on a pocket-sized electronic device.

Even your ATM, debit or driver's license details can be stolen the same way. What’s most scary is you won't even know your credit card has been copied, reproduced and used until you get a huge bill.

So here are the precautions:

• Do not let your credit card out of sight in petrol bunks or restaurants.

• Cover your hands when you type in the number at the ATM.

• Check receipts and bank statements thoroughly.

It all just shows how hard it is to change an infrastructure once it's in. But there's hope in the very near future. Today you can put a thousand rupees into a single plastic card, tomorrow, you can put as many plastic cards as you want, into a single cell phone.

CanvasM, a VAS provider launched its research centre in Noida a few weeks ago, where it unveiled some technologies that are already at the testing stage.

This includes mobile instruments, which essentially double as your credit cards. Just visit your bank, type in a unique password that activates your card, and flash it through the reader to make the transaction.

Even if you lose your cell phone, the credit card can't be activated unless you type in the code, which is not stored in your cell phone. Now that's bound to put the skimmers out of business, for a while at least.