Credit card fraud is a massively big problem in the United States, to which the unauthorized usage of your credit card number costs banks millions upon millions of dollars, inconveniences the credit card holder, and may, depending upon how much attention the credit card owner pays to his bills, cost money directly out of their own pocket. This would imply strongly that keeping control of your credit card accounts in such a manner that they are always in your possession or only utilized on websites that you trust in order to transact business should be a fundamental principle in the usage of such. However, there is one common charge that is done each and every day, to the tune of millions of times each day throughout America, in which you voluntarily relinquish your credit card to a stranger, they will then often proceed to leave out of your field of sight, and you will have to wait often for well over a minute to get your credit card back. That place of establishment is your typical sit down restaurant, and that procedure just cries out as the weak link in credit card security.
While there are some restaurants that will bring a portable card reading terminal to your table, and other establishments to which you must as a customer bring your bill and credit card to a central terminal in which the transaction will be performed in front of you, for the most part, in the vast majority of restaurants, your credit card will be placed in the payment folder and then will proceed in due time to disappear from your table, before eventually reappearing in front of you again. While, one might say, no need to worry, in an era of smart phones that can snap pictures of the front and back of your credit card, and considering that if you ordered alcohol, you have already provided accurate identification to the waiter, who is trained to both memorize and to process information efficiently, you have a right to be concerned that your credit card information, is easily eligible of becoming compromised.
The thing is the waiter doesn't need to enact the fraudulent usage of your credit card himself, as he could sell it quickly online, anonymously to someone else, as this is definitely actionable information that would be of value to those specializing in this type of fraud. What makes these particular credit cards so valuable is that these cards are known to be good cards because they have just been approved at the restaurant establishment, which signifies that micro charges against these cards to inquire as to their validity, would not actually be necessary.
The amount of credit cards that are compromised each year is truly astonishing, and while we read about how millions of cards are compromised because of a specific data breach, too many people lose track of the fact that by virtue of simply handing over your credit card to a stranger, who then leaves with your card, can hardly be considered a prudent policy. In fact, you should feel uncomfortable and vulnerable when someone unknown to you leaves with your credit card for whatever reason, and while waiters at restaurants probably aren't any more dishonest than the rest of us, temptation is a dangerous thing, and some can't resist the lure of that easy money.