Some interesting statistics from a news story by Jason Van Rasse about how a skimmer that was found inside a gas pump was the first incident of its kind in Alberta:
The Canadian Bankers Association said credit card fraud in Canada totalled $358 million last year — with counterfeit cards accounting for almost half that total.
Debit card fraud also costs financial institutions millions of dollars. In 2009, Canadian banks reimbursed $142.3 million stolen from customers’ accounts, according to the Interac Association, the network for debit card and bank machine transactions in Canada.
The latest security measure designed to fight payment card fraud is the introduction of cards with an embedded microchip that prevents them from being counterfeited.
But chip cards — and the equipment needed to read them — are still being introduced, Harper said, so there are plenty of opportunities for skimmers until the old technology is completely phased out in Canada by 2016.
Read more in the Calgary Herald