Watch out for simple Identity Theft

[ahammond]

I was cloned a couple of months back. The first I knew of it was when the local supermarket refused to accept my debit card. A quick telephone call to the bank and it transpired that someone in California and someone else in Ireland had tried to buy goods on line within a couple of hours of each other using my card details. The first one in California was enough to trigger the banks protection system and the card was immediately canceled.

 

A bit of a pain for a couple of days to get a new card but at least I did not get my account raided. I am absolutely certain that the card was cloned by a local garage that I do not normally use but went to in the early hours one morning when I was off fishing. The bloke behind the screen took my card and it was out of my sight for a minute or so while he apparently fiddled with the machine before poking it through with my card in. It was then a simple matter to watch me input my PIN number and lo he had all my card details ready to sell on. Lesson learned never let the card out of your sight.

[Ken Davison South Wales]

I was cloned a couple of months back. The first I knew of it was when the local supermarket refused to accept my debit card. A quick telephone call to the bank and it transpired that someone in California and someone else in Ireland had tried to buy goods on line within a couple of hours of each other using my card details. The first one in California was enough to trigger the banks protection system and the card was immediately canceled.

 

A bit of a pain for a couple of days to get a new card but at least I did not get my account raided. I am absolutely certain that the card was cloned by a local garage that I do not normally use but went to in the early hours one morning when I was off fishing. The bloke behind the screen took my card and it was out of my sight for a minute or so while he apparently fiddled with the machine before poking it through with my card in. It was then a simple matter to watch me input my PIN number and lo he had all my card details ready to sell on. Lesson learned never let the card out of your sight.

 

Did you pass that onto the police?

[ahammond]

I am a retired Police officer myself and know that there is a vast difference between suspecting and proving. So in this case I passed the information on to the card company's fraud section who are in a much better position to monitor this sort of activity than the Police are. Oddly a different garage not too far away was in the papers just a few weeks later when a member of their night staff was charged with card cloning as a result of a card company investigating a spate of it around the area.