Credit Card Fraud

This is very worrying. Please let us know how it works out.

And good luck with it.

One of my colleagues found out earlier than someone was using one of his cards yesterday in various local shops. It looks like it was intercepted between being posted by the bank and arriving with him (similar to the sorting office issues on that recent TV program perhaps).

His wife works for the bank and noticed the transactions today - had that not been the case then it could have been a while before anyone noticed!

Tom,

not very nice is it?
I recently had a similar misfortune, the scoundrels spent about £7k all told.

In my case, they only made a copy of just my one card, so there were no further problems.

The credit card company took a long time at resolving the problem so as long as you have other means of spending money you should be OK. With mine, I went through all my recent spending to identify my spending versus fraudulent use. They sent a confirmation letter which I then signed. I didn't hear anything else

hope this helps,

Neil

Cheers chaps.

Very helpful all round.

I will go through all financial records tonight and seek to identify anything else.

I probably need to review the CC situation since I have cards which are 'empty' and that I no longer use. Now would be a good time to get rid of them

Alex - Excellent advice. I think shredding is definitely in order. Something to do at home or make use of the office services (I work in a large law firm with strict policies on confidential shredding)?

BTW, who/what is CIFAS?

My concern is that the info was nabbed online (could have been skimmed, but I don't think that's co. policy at M&S....), especially since some or all of the paykments have been made via t'internet. If this is the case, do I need to suspect software on my home PC or something in a recent online transaction (play.com)?

What is it that is said about paranoia? The price paid for eternal vigilance...?

Manually operated shredders are available for £5, so it's well worth getting one for home use.
Shredding, I've found, is almost as much fun as popping bubble-wrap bubbles.

Tom

Are you sure it was your credit card company that called you? There is a scam going round at the moment where fraudsters call people who they've got basic credit card details of (e.g. from household rubbish/restaurant copying). They pretend to be checking up on fraud and then ask for the security number on the signature strip on the back of the card, to verify you haven't lost it. They are then able to use the card details they already have, without suspicion - until you get yor next statement.

Why don't you double check with your card company, to be sure the call was genuine?

Sorry if I sound paranoid!

David

Five year ago (before I had any internet access) a company called www.ibill.com were regularly debiting to my Natwest Visa card between $5 and $30 each month.

I contacted Natwest and they refunded the money no questions asked.

What I would like to know is who the fuck are ibill.com, how did they get access to my credit card details, and what exactly do they do? Their website doesn't really make it terribly clear.



Regards,

Steve.

Tom,
If you havent already report it to the police and get a"crime number from them" your CC may reqire one from you.This is the one thing that has always troubled me about using CC's on the internet
oldie.

Jeremy - Will take a trip to Office World or similar tonight to pick up a shredder.

David - That thought did occur to me and I did just that. In fact, when I did, I discovered that there had been more than one dodgy transaction in the last month. Consequently, I had to contact an internet company (3 letters, starts with "A") to ask why they'd been taking money off me. In less than a minute they confirmed the transactions looked dodgy, so these were added to the list for another call to the CC co.

Oldie - will do. Am still surprised at the whole experience, but will contact police to 'square the circle', as it were. (Should that be added to the "Hated expressions" thread?).

Cheers for the support guys.

Tom

I hate getting credit card companies sending me a sheet of cheques that I don't want. Putting these in the bin is asking for trouble so I take it to work and shred it. I even shred my Sainsburys receipts now. Do you know how they got your details Tom?

Rasher

No idea. I'll look into this once the CC co get in touch during their investigation.

Agree re. the cheques. usually these are torn into tiny pieces and spread between bags of rubbish, but I am coming to the conclusion that shredding is better. Actually, the shredding done at work isn't done at work - it's contracted out AFAICT. We have locked wheely bins (not v secure - just been replaced with metal bins with 'postage' slot) which are emptied every so often. One can only hope the stuff is properly shredded.

Am I getting paranoid or what?

I believe that ibill et all charge on behalf of other websites, pay for websites.

The final straw for me came last year when I was stung for the third time. I have been lucky in that they weren't big spends.

The way I deal with it now is not to have credit cards. Simple really.

I worry about things like my ebay and pay pal accounts, so I have stupid complicated passwords.

Thanks Alex. Will have a trot through the site later.

Tom