ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The fraud team at Visa just put out their Holiday Edition Threats Report.
They're seeing holiday fraud increase each year. It was up 11 percent in 2022.
The Vice President and Global Head of Fraud Services at Visa, Michael Jabbara, says digital skimming is a problem. That's where someone is trying to steal your payment information as you try to check out online.
To avoid skimming, he says you should make sure you're on a secure site and enable two-factor authentication to try to deter someone from getting your sensitive information. Jabbara also said to look out for engineering and phishing campaigns that try to trick you into clicking on things you shouldn't.
“They're going to sell you handbags or sporting goods, wherever the case may be. And you click on it, you're kind of going through the checkout flow, and you expect that your goods are going to be delivered. But in fact, it's completely fake, the whole purpose of it was to steal your payment information,” Jabbara said.
The third thing to be alert about — deep insert skimmers. The fraud team at Visa has found these skimmers are getting slimmer and more sophisticated. They're finding skimmers not just when you're getting gas, but when you're trying to grab cash from the ATM or even in a store.
“Usually, if there's something that's slightly off with the terminal, if there's kind of an extra layer that has been inserted, that's looking to skim that data, if it's a little bit harder to kind of tap or dip your card into it, that could potentially be a telltale sign. You know, that the terminal has been tampered with in a malicious way,” Jabbara said.
He says the best things you can do are to use cards with a chip, minimize the amount of data that you make available about yourself on social media, and enable two-factor authentication to make it harder for someone to steal your money.