02 Aug 2026 - AJ
Before I wax historical, I’ll note here that I’m a week late in posting my latest - had a family emergency.
Side note: Happy 2nd birthday to this site! My first post was July 27, 2024.
Anyway, this week’s article was about Ghost Tapping. It’s a way that criminals take advantage of technology, as they always do, to take money that doesn’t belong to them, and a relatively new one. The good news is that the criminal hasn’t gotten hold of your card or anything - they’re just sending charges the way a merchant would, which makes this harder to detect. It’s also strictly in-person as they need to be close to you to read your cards.
Years ago, I likely fell victim to a predecessor of this scam, and boy do I feel old!
Now, to explain what I think happened, I have to explain how places used to handle credit cards and debit cards before electronic payments. One way to do so was by running payments through a machine that took an impression of the card front - the upraised portion, anyway, your card number and name. This used carbon paper to make that impression, and it was stored until the business could run the payment through their bank or processor. For one reason or another, I was flying out of San Francisco airport - this was so long ago that I don’t remember where I was flying or whether it was for my job, but I think it was a holiday/vacation - and I’m pretty sure that this was where some criminal, either a crooked employee or careless handling got a copy of all the info they needed to charge my credit card, including my signature. It’s safe to say everything ran smoothly, but when I got my transactions for my credit card, I noticed a very expensive train trip out of Italy - a country that I’ve never been to. Of course I canceled my card, had the charges disputed and got a new one.
It made a hilarious story when I went to jury duty and I was asked whether I’d ever been the victim of a crime!
Ghost Tapping - depending on whether the “merchant” can see your credit card info - will not empty out your bank account or apply huge charges to your credit card. And with the low amounts, one can assume that one just didn’t remember tapping somewhere; that’s the danger of this particular scheme and why scammers using this method go for lots of tiny charges instead of several bigger ones. It’s tiny compared to some credit card and debit card charges, but it’s still fraud, and in some ways indistinguishable from other kinds of more dangerous credit card fraud. So hopefully, readers, you are keeping track of it.