Here's the deal. These days, you can pretty much do nothing.
Credit Card Information is commonly stolen in two ways these days.
At the Terminal. It's quite common for thieves to simply brake in and steal the POS terminal containing a Hard Drive, that keeps card numbers in Cache, Paging Files. There are programs one can easily find to obtain this information, and the criminals are in & out of these stores so quickly, they don't care about the Alarms, or anything. By the Time the cops get to respond, there long gone.
You may have received a phone call once, from, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, where they wanted to cancel the card, as they suspected it may have been compromised. Well, truth be told, they've realized more then one card holder, has made a purchase from a certain merchant, and they both made a transaction before the fraud occurred, so if you made transaction at the same location, they often times just suspect, and cancel out the whole block of cardholders.
The other way.. is, they simply plant a Malware, or Computer Virus on your computer. You don't have to open a single file for this to happen. You can just be using Firefox or Internet Explorer, on ANY website, and BAM, unknowingly malware get's installed in the background, without you ever even knowing. Plus, they don't take up much computer resources anymore. Your computer doesn't slowdown at all.
In the Background of your computer, a program is running, and every keystroke you make, ever site you go to, get's logged, and sent off to a Database (normally hosted in China, Russia, or on Hacked American servers) What's interesting, is there's also built in Plug Ins.
Like say, I head on to BOFA online banking, and go to sign in. I punch in my normal screen name, and then, it randomly spits out "we don't recognize this computer, please answer your site key challenge question" I answer my normal questions, and then it allows me to punch in my password. Through there program, they can launch a custom version of FireFox (Internet Browser) and use my OWN computers internet connection to LOG IN, and take over my account (with the details I so nicely provided).
The Newer plug ins, allow them to make a custom balance screen, so when you check your balance, the same amount shows up and you can't tell that they've taken everything. They can also use your own Computers cookies, now, instead of bothering with entering in those Challenge Questions.
There's also Plugins, for a common online banking website utilized by many smaller banks, but, the majority of them are after big accounts at Wells Fargo, Chase, PNC, Bank of America, USAA, US Bank, Ally, etc.
But, let's put aside online banking for a moment. There's also a CC Grabber Plugin. This little tool, looks at every numeric keystroke you type in, and checks them against a CC Bin. This Bin basically tells it, if it's a card number your typing up, or if it's just a random number for the hell of it.
So, every Card Number you type up, along with Zip Codes, Addresses, CCVs, everything get's recorded, and nicely sorted for easy access.
And as you may have guessed, there's a plug in, that grabs all of your usernames and passwords. They really don't care about your Facebook Logins, but, they'll normally just take all of these, and sell them in a bunch for like .10 cents a account.
I gotta run now, and don't have time to add more. But I'll gladly answer any questions you guys have. And No, I'm not a Theif, I'm just Really into Computer Security Coding
