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If you dined at Tenement on Ludlow Street the past two months and paid by credit card, check your statements. The NY Post reports that a waitress was arrested after stealing the credit card information of at least 37 customers. The police say Dominika Szymanska "used a 'skimmer' — a hand-held mechanical embossing device — to make copies of the diners' credit cards" between March and May. Crazy! Gothamist would say pay cash, but when ATM scammers are about, maybe we should go back to using stones and shells as currency. Tenement owner Paul Uljaky said, "This is obviously not something I had anything to do with," because something like credit card fraud could really screw up the next round of Zagat ratings.
Slightly related: The Tenement Museum is great for learning more about the Lower East Side.
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The skimmer doesn't have much to do with the magnetic stripe on the card. I suppose it's just a cumbersome way to write down the credit card number and cardholder's name. You get the same effect with some deliverymen who do a rubbing of your card on their carbon payment form; the skimmer is a bit much to schlepp around on a bicycle.
Remember, in a restaurant, you're handing your credit card over to someone you don't know, and they walk away with it. It's out of sight for a few minutes and it comes back. You have to trust the waitstaff not to do evil things with it while they have it.
Credit card security actually comes more from the card issuers than anything else, by allowing you to repudiate charges and by limiting the damages you incur from fraud. Take a look at Bruce Schneier's notes here. I don't believe ATM cards used as credit cards have the same protection. I try using as little cash as possible, actually.
Hey Cheng, you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Shut up...
Skimming pulls much more than the number off of your card. Similar fraud can be committed with just the card number but skimming is much more sophisticated level of fraud than just a convenient way to write down numbers.