So far this site has identified some quite ingenious methods used by criminals to commit credit card fraud. However, the final method of credit card fraud that this investigation identifies is without a doubt the most sophisticated and easily accessible of all the methods identified so far. Credit card number generators are computer programs that generate valid credit card numbers and expiry dates. An article that appeared in the Computer Times 'Get Free Credit' (27 June 2001),

Types of Credit Card Fraud:

Application Fraud

Intercept Fraud

Lost and Stolen Cards

Fake and Doctored Cards

Skimming

Site Cloning and False Merchant Sites

Triangulation

which also can be found on the Asia One web site gives a clear and concise explanation of how these generators work, without being over technical. These generators work by generating lists of credit card account numbers from a single account number.  The software works by using the mathematical Luhn algorithm that card issuers use to generate other valid card number combinations. Early generators could generate up to 999 valid card numbers from a single account number. The latest most sophisticated generators use advanced algorithmic hypothesising to generate tens of thousands of valid credit card numbers from a single account number. However, these generators are not completely reliable. To generate expiry dates, the generators take a guesstimate based on a database of expiry date and account number similarities. So, if cards ending in 4324 share a common expiry date of November 2004, then the generator will configure card numbers around this mark to have the same expiry date. The latest generators claim to be over 99.9998% reliable at generating valid credit card numbers and expiry dates. The generators allow users to illegally generate as many numbers as the user desires, in the form of any of the credit card formats, whether it be American Express, Visa, MasterCard or Switch.

The screenshots to the right are of a popular credit card generator. The software can be downloaded for free from many sites on the internet, however, the software is highly illegal and should thus never be downloaded. This site found it very easy to locate sites where downloading of such software was possible. By typing in 'credit card generators' into the popular 'Yahoo' search engine this investigation found two illegal sites on the first page of results. (Refer to Links for further information on credit card generators).

These generators have serious implications for the levels of credit card fraud around the world. In conjunction with skimming techniques, generators make credit card fraud very accessible and very efficient. These techniques make credit card fraud a truly transnational crime that has the ability to grow out of control, unless there are massive changes to the system of transaction. Generators give fraudsters the ability to steal the numbers of any credit card in the world, at the touch of a button.