There’s more than one way to get taken to the cleaners this holiday season, but one scam that has seen tremendous growth over recent years is skimming.

Skimming is the process by which scammers use electronic card reading devices and hidden cameras to record personal identification numbers and card information to make duplicate cards and drain money from victims’ bank accounts.

The scam has become much more common in recent years, according to banking industry service providers.

FICO Card Alert Service, the arm of a credit scoring company that monitors ATM activity for banks, reported last year that it had detected six times as many skimming incidents in 2015 as the previous year. The company, which monitors hundreds of thousands of ATMs, did not provide actual numbers because of contractual obligations.

The behind-the-scenes snapshot of skimming’s rise in popularity is reinforced by anecdotal reports of major frauds across the county. In April of 2016 a San Diego man was charged with running a nationwide skimming operation that allowed him to use stolen information from nearly 4,900 cards to steal nearly half a million dollars — much of which was sent overseas, according to The New York Times.

Skimming scams have also now expanded from a big-city phenomenon to an across-the-country reality, as criminals behind the frauds began targeting nonbank ATMs and the card readers on gas pumps — of which Pennsylvania has about 70,000.

The effect of this surge in skimming is dramatic. The Florida Department of Agricutlure and Consumer Services estimates that each skimming incident results in the creation of 100 counterfeit credit or debit cards — each of which are used to make $1,000 in fraudulent purchases.

In other words, for every card that’s skimmed $100,000 worth of theft takes place.

If that’s surprising to you, consider that in 2015 the payment card industry pegged fraud losses at nearly $8.5 billion nationwide.

This is not a small-sum game being played for peanuts. It is an international racket that’s costing people and companies billions of dollars each year.

But while more than 30 other states have enacted laws banning the use of skimmers, Pennsylvania is once again late to the table.

It wasn’t until this week that the state House Judiciary Committee unanimously passed a bill (HB 1918) that would make it illegal to use or possess a skimmer. The legislation also makes the act of transferring stolen information onto a different card a third degree felony, increasing the penalty from its current classification as a misdemeanor.

That’s the correct approach, but it’s difficult to understand what’s taken the General Assembly so long to respond appropriately to credit card skimming.

There is literally no use for these devices other than defrauding people and businesses. They should have been declared illegal long ago, but our legislators allowed technology to outpace the law.

The judiciary committee’s vote, which sets HB 1918 for consideration by the full House, is a promising start. But the legislation still needs approval from both chambers before it becomes law.

We hope legislators recognize the pressing need to protect people and businesses from, and move speedily to enact these prohibitions.