Credit card fraud

[Howard]

Hi folks,

It seems my parents have become victim of credit card fraud. They received a letter today detailing a few of aparantly quite a few transactions that took place that the CC company flagged up as suspicious (including my car insurance but that's been sorted).

It looks really bizarre... The figures detailed on the letter are exact... Amounts such as £10.00, £5.00, £20.00, £50.00. All of these took place in the space of about 20 minutes, a few days ago, and there's a load more aparantly; we're being sent a statement so we can verify which are genuine..
Some of the payments were made to places like T-Mobile (traceable surely?!) and Christian Aid (did they feel guilty or something??)

Now my parents aren't ones to go out spending loads every day, so these are naturally pretty suss, I was just wondering what methods are used nowadays to obtain card details? Can anyone shed some light for me?

Also, is there any way of tracing who done it (go to each retailer and obtain IP addresses and such), or is this a pointless exercise as the cretins will be long gone?



Thanks for any light you can shed I'd just like to learn more really

[TheAnimus]

I got stung exactly 13 days ago, they took my credit limit. So now until all the paperwork gets sorted have no credit card, which makes living a bit harder!

intresting thing with mine is they started with £1 transactions to a company called "o2 buynet" which sounds like a load of new labour. Next came £10 for T-Mobile, which was used to call numbers in pakistan.

Later they reached some £580 on a signle transaction.

The t-mobile was a pre-pay which is assumed to be incorrectly registered. If i want vengance then all i can do really is get all the numbers they called (assume at least one to be family/friends) and have them slowly and painfully killed. Regretably they also have my address, and whilst its a lot cheaper to get someone tourchered in pakistan, what goes around comes around.

edit: basically you've got little chance of anything happening. My details, i've no idea how they came out, i shread (crosscut) everything, even non confidental junk mail just because i bought a cross cut shredder and i like to play with it. I'm also a security nut, who frequently does a netstatp -a or looks at his hardware firewall just because i've obessive tendancies. Also they had the card holders address, my parents, some 300miles away from any restruant where i'd used it, my surname is distinctive enough to have mabye only 10 people in london with my full name, but no one would think to check cornwall for an address for a city worker.

[kickstart 1]

Dont know how its done , but a friend of mine had the same thing with T- mobile.

[ukengineer]

You can buy these details from the call centre workers in India, they sell our details. Was on TV a few months back, everything right down to a pin number is on the computers they work with.

[TheAnimus]

You can buy these details from the call centre workers in India, they sell our details. Was on TV a few months back, everything right down to a pin number is on the computers they work with.

no, pin numbers are not known to employs in a call center, than can only re-set them, again to a number they wont know.

Not TV is sometimes a bit daily mail, in fact many surveys showed the outsourced centers have fewer info leaks, purely because they have more too loose. In the Uk if you can be bothered to work, you get money, lots of it. In other regions, you starve. Now the call centers pay more than the going rate, as such people are very loyal to their jobs, where as in the UK people think pfft its only £2 more than minimum wage, get greedy sell details. Someone who is greatful will be less likely to abuse the trust.

[Whiternoise]

T-Mobile seems to be popular.. glad i'm on Vodafone..

[TheAnimus]

nope, i'm not a t-mobile customer yet i got stung by their stupidity.

Acording to some guy at lloyds card services, certain pre-pay mobile phone providers are recless to let them top up a phone with a credit card that is not registered to the same address as the mobile phone.

[alexkoon]

I follow another forum (unrelated to computing) and a lot members use a particular online store. Many have claimed to have had their credit card details compromised at this store - 'proof' comes from people claiming only to have used their card at this store only before being used for fraud. Others claim to have spoken to card companies with some at these card companies claiming that this particular store was or seemed to be the common factor.

The usual pattern seems to be a few small transactions toT-Mobile, O2 or Stagecoach, then a big transaction at places like Currys etc. So far on the near 30 page thread, no one has been directly out of pocket.

[TheAnimus]

wasn't play was it?

[Howard]

What was the store?

[Nick F]

About 6 months ago I wanted to put a £6 transaction through on one of my CC's that I knew was empty. For some reason it got recjected which I thought was a bit strange.

I checked with the bank and they said it has been maxed out with plane tickets and online betting sites. I got all the money back within 4 days which was good. I spoke to some guy in the claims department who would't tell me exactly what they would do to track them and hopefully catch the people that did this.

He did however hint at the fact most banks now have massice crime units that deal with this kind of thing all the time. Your parents won't however ever find out if anyone has been caught.

[ukengineer]

When i worked at the post office, they caught people taking Bday cards, bank cards and credit cards, all with intelligence people, following them. and little tracking devices in certain envelopes, sometimes its the post man believe it or not.
Although Royal Mail do try and avoid leaking this info, there has only been a couple of cases known in the press and mainstream news.

Heres a link to some cases http://www.securemail.co.uk/sms/corp...ws/default.asp

Cant trust anyone knowadays.

[[R4A]Bigman]

This is quite worrying actually.

I'm guessing that if this can happen with CCs then it can also happen with Debit Cards? I don't own a CC atm, so use my debit cards for all my online purchases. Now I'm thinking maybe I can't get my money back from DC fraud because its just gone?

Is it worth me getting hold of a CC?

[Choo Choo]

I had it happen to my debit card a couple of months ago. Found out one day that I couldn't withdraw any money so I checked my internet banking. Turns out some bought a couple of planes tickets using my card.

Luckily HSBC sorted me out pretty quickly, and I managed to get all my money back.

I rarely used my credit card before, but now I use it whenever I can instead of my debit.

[Moby-Dick]

Recently been the victim of debit fraud - Tesco's Pay at the Pumps where the vector of choice for spending my hard earned. ( no pin required )

[Mike Fishcake]

I recommend Cahoot and their "web card". Basically, they issue a "use once" credit card number so if you want to buy anything online, you can do it using that number, then once that's done, the number becomes invalid. Obviously this is a disadvantage if someone keeps your number on file, but if you only do a bit of ordering, might be something worth considering.