Where do you think identity theft is most commonly started?
Where do you think identity theft is most commonly started?
4/13/2007 – According to a study done in America, the most common place where 40% of identity theft is found is in restaurants. Now here in the UK a lot of identity theft is also started in restaurants, after all – it is when you are at your most relaxed and you are enjoying your evening. That is when the identity fraudsters strike and you are left with a very empty bank account.
The study was done by Visa, one of the most well known names in the credit card sector. It continuously monitors cardholder’s transactions for fraud and that is where it found that around 40% of identity theft is started in restaurants. So just how can your identity be stolen in a restaurant? Well it usually isn’t the staff so you do not have to worry about that.
What generally happens is that the fraudsters hack into the restaurants computers and that is where they find all of the customer details and transactions. You would think that they would not be able to get into the restaurants system but unfortunately not all restaurants make it harder for fraudsters to get information from them. Visa is trying to crack down on these restaurants however in a bid to make their customers information safer. After all, if a customer finds out that their information was stolen at a particular restaurant, they would not trust that restaurant again and therefore they would not use it.
Overall identity theft happens for a number of reasons, but in restaurants it is usually down to the computer systems being hacked into. It is possible that some people look out for your details and members of staff may occasionally be to blame, but usually it is an outside hacker who can get into your details. So keep this in mind the next time that you do dine out and always check your statements and transaction details to see if everything adds up.