Carding is one of the largest methods of online scam nowadays. The name of this business comes directly from its essence: carding is the use of stolen credit or debit card information in order to steal money from the card.
Carders themselves are the people who steal and use the necessary data. They might be using different methods to acquire the information needed to make a payment from someone else’s card. One of the most popular methods is online phishing, which involves creating a fake website. Such website is usually a copy of a bank’s website, so that the users would not notice the different address and enter their card info on such website.
The other way to obtain someone else’s card information is to scan his card. This might happen almost anywhere, the carder has only to scan someone’s card with, for example, a copy of paying terminal at a supermarket.
As soon, as the carder receives all the necessary information, he has several options:
• To sell this information in Darknet
• To immediately steal the available funds
• To wait until a bigger sum is transferred to the card
As for the first point, it is possible to purchase the necessary information, including social security number for around 20$ in the Darknet. Some carders do not even bother with hacking or stealing the card information, they simply purchase the databases for further operations.
When the carder is ready to steal the money, he also has several ways of doing that:
• Transfer the cash to his card
• Withdraw cash from an ATM
• Purchase something online
The transfer and direct cash withdrawals are the least popular methods, as they are easily trackable. As carding is obviously illegal, carders do their best to hide their identities. The most popular method is an online purchase. Carders may simply order something online or purchase and resell a gift card from a popular shop like Amazon.
In case carders purchase goods for resell, they usually use other people to receive the parcels. Such people are called drops and their job is to receive the parcel and transfer it to the carder. After that the goods are usually resold and the carder receives clean and laundered money.
Of course, carders are always pursued by law. However, they are usually familiar with all the newest methods of hiding their identity, which makes them almost impossible to track. In most cases, the law enforcement agencies are ably only to catch the drops, who do not have any information about the carders themselves.