Card Not Present fraud
Card not present fraud is when a criminal uses someone else's credit or debit card to obtain goods or services.
It generally involves the theft of genuine card details which are then used to buy something over a remote channel such as the phone, fax, mail order or over the internet. Cardholders are often not aware anything has happened until they check their statements.
The problem in countering this type of fraud is that neither the card nor the cardholder needs to be present at the point-of-sale, so the card not present merchants are unable to check the physical security features of the card to determine if it is genuine.
Security details (such as the three-digit number on the back of a card), passwords (offered for online spending by MasterCard's SecureCode and Visa's Verified by Visa schemes), and regular checking of credit reports can help insure against this.