Ten years ago, skimming was much less common, Skimmers were too bulky to carry around and had to be hidden under counters. Smaller skimmers, roughly the size of a pager, hit the scene two or three years ago. These skimmers are easy to carry, easy to hide and easy to buy.
A few years ago you had to make a skimmer yourself. Now you can go on the Internet and buy one. Everything needed to pull off this crime is available on the Internet. A skimmer costs about $300, and the equipment to make a counterfeit credit card cost about $5,000 to $10,000.
If it weren't bad enough, there's another kind of skimming going on as well. A thief slips a small, skimming bug into an older credit card terminal. The bug pulls credit card data from their terminal. A few days later the thief removes the bug. The bad guy comes and takes out the bugs and no one's the wiser.
