One form of credit card fraud is card cloning or skimming. The fraudster here copies the details of the card of an individual into expired, blank or stolen cards and thus makes a clone of the original card. The cloned card is then used by fraudsters.

The cloning device is easily available and can be purchased by fraudsters by shelling out a mere 30,000 to 50,000 rupees. The device contains a scanner and a software which scans the card and stores its details. The device can store information of as many as 3000 cards.

The fraudsters get details such as card number, name on card and expiry date of the card using the cloning device. Name and address of the card holder is however not disclosed.

The card holder only comes to know of this fraud when he receives the monthly statement from the card company.

In order to overcome this problem, many card companies are coming up with chip based credit as well as debit cards. These cards contain microchips embedded in them which store card details in an encrypted form. If the fraudster copies the card information, then all he gets is encrypted data which is not accessible by him. However, these chip based cards come at a premium price.