What is Credit Card Shaving?
There is a relatively new form of credit card fraud and identity theft which does not require a victim’s actual plastic credit card, just the random customer identification number it contains. The scam known as credit card shaving has grown in popularity in recent years because of its low tech methodology and no need for social engineering or other high-risk identity theft tactics. The criminal doesn’t even have to make any personal contact at all with the victim in order to pull off a credit card shaving scam. The scheme begins with the scammer testing out a random series of 16 numbers which could conceivably match an existing credit card account. This step may be a little time-consuming, but once a match is found, the identity thief now has the legitimate credit card account number of an unwitting victim. No other personal identification, such as a PIN number or expiration date, is strictly necessary, just the 16 numbers of an active account. The next step in a credit card shaving sc
