This is my favorite techie forum so I'm posting my question here; even though it has nothing to do with Linux maybe someone can bring some light to my dilemma.

I'm from Dominican Republic (DR) you know that little country in the middle of the Caribbean, the thing is I have a credit card from a bank in DR which is a MasterCard, I travelled to Miami in USA and bought a sweater in a Gap store this was the last time that I used my credit card when a slew of credit card charges started to appear in Toronto Canada, I’ve never used my credit card in websites and the fraud happened 4 days after.

Now this person started going to subway like 4 different times in two days, went to the gas station like ten times in one day. The next time I wanted to use the credit card the transaction was denied, I called my bank and what I’m telling you now is what I found out.

Technically speaking I started thinking how could they do this, in my mind I have two different situations that I could think of:

1. The credit card system that Gap uses is a centralized one and my credit card magnetic band information ends up being in some database in that Gap has and then is posted to the MasterCard network. Where maybe the information could have leaked out from Gap and ended up in the hands of these culprits.

2. The other situation that I could think of is that they intercepted the charge information that was being send to my bank in DR. It seems kind of unlikely I’m assuming that their using very strong encryption for this type of EDI systems.

So I’m kind of lost with this Issue. If anybody has any idea regarding this let me know.

more likely, the clerk in the store took a fast imprint of your card while you were chatting your wife, looking at more items, etc.

When you hand your card to someone, stand and watch them do the transaction until they return your card to you.

And request any carbons and make sure that anything that needs to be destroyed is destroyed in front of you.

In Toronto Canada, people have been placing camera's, and other attachments to kiosks for getting bank & credit card information. It was on citynews.ca some time ago this year.

They have started the same here in Fl also, cameras and card readers at atms. a few have been found in the Tampa area so far.

In a restaurant, be sure that they bring back YOUR card when they give you the slip to sign.

I live in Canada, in our area the use of Debit cards is everywhere. It would be very very odd to find a retail outlet that does not accept debit cards.

Recently we traveled to Vegas, and the first 3 places we went I tried to use a debit card, and was told they do not accept them, so we started looking for it in our travels. It seemed that debit had not yet made it's way to Vegas.

It struck me as odd, as i prefer the use of debit because of the requirement for a PIN number instead of a signature that no one ever looks at.

I use my bosses credit card all over town for work purchases, even signing my own name right in front of the clerks, which is nothing at all like the name on the card. No one cares.

I prefer to politely just advise them that i'll come to the front/desk/pay-area rather than have my credit card handled out of my sight.

here in the Uk credit and debit cards require a pin to use....
also the shop should never touch your card, you are supposed to put it in the machine and take it out.

the problem here is with ATMs with skimmer devices that clone the strip (shop terminals use the chip but atms still use the strip) and have a pinhole camera to capture your pin....
so i would recomend learning how to type your pin by feel, (hint the 5 allways has a raised bump on it) then allways type it in with your wallet over the pad so nobody can see the pin