It must be hard for the non-techies of the world to keep up with all the latest tech terminology.

I just read an article entitled “New scam: Cloned gift cards, spyware that tracks reloading.”  What the thief did was to write a program that constantly accessed the merchant’s card balance checking website to check to see if the card had been activated.  He simply automated what most thieves practicing this type of gift  card theft do by hand.

Spyware, on the other hand, is a term used for software that is installed on an unsuspecting persons computer that monitors their activity, reporting such things as passwords for banking and other websites so thieves can drain the accounts.

But spyware could easily look for card balance checks and grab the gift card numbers, which thieves could use to clone the cards and spend the money.  And it would help the thieves avoid the potentially risky task of stealing the gift cards in the first place to capture the card numbers.

Just one more potential problem to watch out for.  If you fall victim to spyware, there is a lot more at stake than the balance of your gift card.  It is important to have internet and anti-virus security software on your computer and keep it up to date.