Card theft

[Fat Tone]

This is the 4th time this year

Never had problems in over 20 years of having debit and credit cards.

In April our Credit card were replaced. The story was we used them somewhere that got compromised so all MasterCards used there were replaced as a precaution.

Then again when we got back from Florida (late August).

Then again just 2 weeks after the replacements arrived. We had only used them at well-known stores FFS!!

And today I checked my current account online and the 'available' was several hundred less than it should be but there were various movements happening so I wasn't overly concerned. Tonight I checked again and now there's over £1200 unavailable.

My bank tells me its £600 at Dell, £600 at Littlewoods Direct (a catalogue) and some small items. How do people expect to get away with things that have to be delivered? My card is now stopped, but I have to contact the fraud people again tomorrow to pursue these transactions!!!

[Nowhere]

Sad to hear :/

But...please...don't name threads like that, during first blink of an eye it seemed like "car...", and that caused genuine negative emotional responce after the thread with all those nice photos of bluetooth equipped car

[Fat Tone]

Just checked...car still there! Now THAT would be cause to be upset. At least I shouldn't suffer more than hassle with this.

[The PIT]

Happened to me three times now but over a longer period.
I'm starting to think I'll tell my credit card company that the card is broken every six months so i can get a new one.
Alternatively it's time they started using one shot credit cards. At least you can pin point the gulity party pretty quickly unless it's someone at the card issuers in the first place.
Last time I made a profit on the fraud. A strange transaction from the old card seemed to get delayed so it never really appeared on my bill but the card company refunded me that as well.

[Nowhere]

Uhm, sorry for distress/feeling the need to check. (should have thought about it, if even my blood pressure went up after misreading thread title...)

[cjolley]

Jeez, you guys are scaring me.
Is it an England thing?
Our CC is on file at the London Times for Becky's crossword subscription.

Anyway FT, I hope you can get it straightened out quickly and not too painfully.

[Fat Tone]

Do you beleive in coincidences?

I rarely use my debit card, prefering to collect benefits on my CC and interest on the current account.

I had my last CC for 2 weeks before it was replaced again. During that time it was only used at well known stores, and for the deposit on my car...at a main dealer.

When I purchased my car, all the money was in my bank account and I used my debit card...

That's the only place I've used both.

2+2 = 5?

[cjolley]

Do you beleive in coincidences?

I'm pretty suspicious of them.

The fact that they are different businesses does not mean they don't use the same off shore processing company.

[Dr Mordrid]

Are any of your retailers still using paper impressions of the card to do the purchases? Those carbons, if any, contain all the info and dumpster divers (or young employees) can gather quite a collection which often get passed on.

We use the real cards only on electronic terminals, and then we're very careful about it.

For online we use a single-use card number/exp. date/security code generated either by Pay Pal's browser plugin or our banks website which has a similar feature. We can also go to our bank and get a free pre-paid 'gift card' - looks/works like a MC - which we can use for planned local purchases where we know the final amount. Used one of those to buy a car for cash last year.

Which ever way our real cards don't get out much.

[Fat Tone]

All electronic.

I'm appauled by the process. Even though I reported all of the items before they cleared, nothing can be done to prevent them clearing. I have to log a dispute for each item AFTER it clears. That means calls yesterday, today and again tomorrow. They 'investigate' for 7 days, send me papers to sign, and then hopefully give me the money back 7 days after that. How many people can afford to be without £1280 for that length of time, especially just after a major purchase?

The banks apparently can't involve the police on my behalf as that would be again the Data Protection Act. That makes me want to spit!

[Gurm]

It's similar here but the banks have committed to returning your money in 24 hours. In reality it takes a couple days.

We're lucky so far. I currently use my allowance account for all small purchases, it never has more than $100 or so in it, but I still monitor the transactions weekly.

The main account does still get some use, but only at well-known establishments and ONLY on secure machines. I almost always use it as a debit card instead of a credit card, and my PIN is pretty ridiculous.

But still I get freaked out.

[cjolley]

I feel so old school.
We use our CC like a checkbook.
But the bill is paid in full each month, so no interest.
I must say though that I haven't got the slightest idea what our pin is.
We've only used it to get cash once (we were out of the country) in 20 years and we NEVER use ATMs.

[cjolley]

I had no idea this was possible

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27085818/

ConsumerMan: Beware of debit card skimmers Secret Service, police warn of 'well-organized' debit card skimmers
By Herb Weisbaum
MSNBC
updated 11:37 a.m. CT, Wed., Oct. 8, 2008
Becki Turner got the call from her bank’s fraud department on Labor Day. The investigator wanted to know if she had withdrawn $500 from an ATM in California over the holiday weekend. She hadn’t. She couldn’t. Turner was home in Puyallup, Wash.
“I was just flabbergasted,” she says. “I had the card with me, the ATM was in another state, and the person using the machine had to have my security code.” Turner worried crooks had gotten into the banking system and stolen her password.
It wasn’t anything that complicated. Puyallup police say thieves snagged her account information — along with the debit card numbers and PIN codes of hundreds of other people — at two gas stations in the area.
They did it by installing their own hard-to-spot card reader, called a skimmer, on top of the card reader built into the pump. The skimmer is able to grab the account information from the card without interfering with the legitimate payment transaction.
...



...
In Las Vegas, police have discovered even more sophisticated technology – wireless transmitters installed inside the pump. “They can actually sit in the parking lot with a laptop and get real-time information as victims use their card,” explains Lt. Robert Sebby of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Because there’s nothing on the outside of the pump, there’s no way you can tell the pump is compromised.
...

[Fat Tone]

Things inside the pumps are news to me. A bit daft though, as only a very limited number of people would be able to plant them.

In my case the Dell transaction never cleared, so I'm only £630 out of pocket at the moment. Still waiting for the snail mail to arrive from Madrid.

[cjolley]

Things inside the pumps are news to me. A bit daft though, as only a very limited number of people would be able to plant them.

...

Oh I don't know. The people who work at gas pumps aren't generally rocket scientists.

Show up at the store with a work truck and tell the innocent working there that you are here to re-calibrate the pump or something. If they object just say "Isn't this 3712 State Street?" (of course it isn't) when they say no just say sorry and move on to the next prospect.

My guess is that you could be unscrewing the cover of a pump within an hour.

And, of course, gas pumps aren't the only possible targets by a long way. That tiny reader might fit in the regular card machines in many stores , for example.