Can A Stolen Gift Card Be Traced?
I was in a retail store today, I saw these people discussing how easy it is for people to use stolen credit cards, and buy those visa gift cards without being traced after they purchase the gift cards.
I find this very hard to believe because. A) when you purchase a visa gift card they send the gift card number to the server to the company that owns those gift cards to have it activate it, and I am sure they log at which store that happened at, too. B) I am sure they can monitor that gift card and it will leave a paper trail just like a credit card. Am I wrong? So can a stolen gift card be traced?
The answer to your question - can stolen gift cards be traced is - The only way a gift card can be tracked is through receipts for purchases. However, there are few stores or online stores that require entering personal data. Therefore, most often fraudsters successfully manage to convert another person’s gift card into real money, or resell it later. Due to the complexity of tracking such fraud, all merchants of such cards, and customers who purchase them, must be as careful as possible.