How can you get credit card information online? Well, there can be two possible scenarios here—for illegal or legal corporate use. This publication comes in between to suit your intent. You must note that it’s illegal to collect people’s credit card information without their consent – it’s theft.

The point is: if someone willingly gives out their card information, they trust you enough to do so and it’s legal, even though their bank is against the idea. But if you’re going to go the illegal route, you want the card information by all means necessary. This would mean you intend to go on a shopping spree without paying or probably to trade/leak the card information online for money.

Suppose you intend to or merely want to learn how carders/hackers obtain working credit cards online. This publication explains the most commonly used methods out there. Knowing these techniques also helps you to protect your card from any unauthorized use.

The average person will say “there’s no way for someone to know another person’s credit card information”. This isn’t true, there are many online ways to do so, and it happens every day. Below are the online ways to get credit card information:

1. Online phishing

You probably already know about the old-fashioned SMS and phone call phishing. If someone called or sent a message pretending to be from your financial institution and asking for your credit card information, you probably would ignore or report them. Now, that’s how smart you’ve grown.

However, carders have grown even smarter. Only a few still try the luck of phishing with SMS and phone calls. Most now go the online way—using clone websites to steal card information.

How does this work? Usually in two ways – (1) a fraudster can fake a website or application that looks exactly like your bank’s website or an e-commerce site like Amazon or straight up create an e-commerce website selling items at a too-good-to-be price.

The URL of the scamming site is then shortened with a link shortening service such as Bitly.com. URL shortening is important to conceal the fake URL directing to a cloned site that steals your credentials. Now, while on the website, the scammer would have cloned the payment page or login page to look so real. After entering your card info and logging in, your information moves to the scammer while you’re redirected to the main website. It happens in split seconds, so you don’t even know what’s going on.

As for the e-commerce site hosting cheap stuff, when you provide your credit card information on the checkout page, the details are compromised and most times never get to complete the data, not to mention not receiving the carted item.

2. Malware and spyware injection

Quite technical but not so much for advanced hackers. The average hacker (which anyone can be) is to have a target install a keylogger in their computer. Keylogger software can be downloaded from the web and configured following the developer’s instructions.

The target is then made to download the keylogger in their system which is operated remotely by the hacker whenever a data connection is detected.

The logger will simply record every keystroke entered by the target. Usually, the hacker has to force the target to engage in any activity that requires entering their credit card details for any purpose. Once this is done, the hacker on the other end keeps following up on recorded keystrokes until they find that of the credit card. As you would think, not only credit card information is compromised here, but other sensitive information is also compromised.

Malware injection is runnable in various other ways, depending on the hacker. Some will straight up intercept outgoing data that may include the credit card details while some can use compromise the browsing data.

3. RFID skimming

RFID skimming is not really an online method of getting credit card information. However, it involves radio frequency identification technology that wirelessly intercepts RFID chip-based credit card information or even from smartphones and tablets.

RFID skimmers make use of a near-field communication-enabled device that records unencrypted data from credit cards or the RFID chip of a device to get the card information, including cardholder name, card number, expiry date, and CVV.

Well, it turns out RFID is not really worth the effort for a carder or hacker since it is “a hit-or-miss proposition”, according to IDX. Moreover, contactless credit cards are encrypted and most credit card chips are not RFID-capable.

4. Data breaches

Data breaches take place when sensitive information is stolen from a website’s database without the knowledge or authorization of the administrators. It can happen to both small and large organizations, so those websites keeping credit card information risk losing it to hackers.

The misery in this is that even the financial institution or e-commerce website may not be aware of the breach until after some time. Even if they are aware, they need some time to fix it. That little time is enough to get so much hacked credit card information with money leaked on the dark web.

A data breach is usually quite advanced and requires a pro or a group of pros to get it done. Let’s add that it can leave a devastating effect on the business. Perhaps, one wants to learn how to become a hacker for the possibility of pulling this through.

5. Compromised public Wi-Fi networks

If public Wi-Fi is not secure, it can be used to get sensitive information such as credit card details when the cardholder enters them while connected to the network.

A hacker can create a free public Wi-Fi and leave it open for people to get connected. While the target is connected, the hacker intercepts their device information and tries to get them to sign on to reveal their credit card information. There are many ways to intercept Wi-Fi data, including sniffing data packets, MitM (Man-in-the-Middle) attack, etc.

A hacker just needs to be well-versed in a certain technique to get the credit card information of the connected user.