Credit card skimming, a form of identity theft, is the theft of credit card information by a dishonest employee of a legitimate merchant, manually copying down numbers, or using a magnetic stripe reader on a pocket-sized electronic device. Common scenarios for skimming are restaurants or bars where a skimmer has possession of a victim's credit card out of their immediate view. If your card is swiped through a skimmer, it will record the information contained on the electronic strip and store it or transfer it to a computer.
Instances of skimming have also been reported where the perpetrator has put a device over the card slot of a public cash machine (automated teller machine or ATM), which reads the magnetic strip as a user unknowingly passes their card through it.
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