Marion and I had a painful experience on Saturday. We went shopping in St Andrews for some small gifts but when we tendered our Tesco credit card we had to go through a huge rigmarole and were ushered to one side and asked to speak to the card provider to prove our identities. We proved who we were but then had to call their fraud line to discuss things further. It transpired that somebody had been topping up their mobile phone using my credit card. Fortunately only £30 had gone through to date (at least that's all that Tesco bank told me about)but I told them that I was certain that my PIN had not been compromised.
It appears that a PIN is not needed for mobile top ups and all that is used is the cardholder post code,the three digit number from the back of the card and sometimes the cardholder's date of birth. My address and date of birth are not exactly state secrets although the three digit number could only be taken by someone who had seen my card or someone working for a business I had paid using the card. The result was that the card that we planned to use for the weekend was cancelled. Fortunately we had other cards with us but the fraudster has caused a huge amount of hassle. We have had to change Internet orders that we placed last week but had not yet been charged, my PAYPAL account had to be altered,we lost all the Tesco clubcard points that we would have gained both on the weekend's spending and for the period before the replacement card arrives and we also felt really uncomfortable being given the third degree in a busy shop.
None of this could be classed as a huge problem but a few weeks ago I was also told that I had borrowed £500 from a payday loan company and they wanted the money back. Again it seems that the loan company relied upon post code and date of birth alone before handing over the money and paying it into someone else's account.
Some, including the perpetrators, may see these frauds as victimless crimes as it's only the banks that lose out and they are fair game (not my opinion I hasten to add). Marion and I are fairly competent at managing our affairs. We shred virtually everything that could provide a fraudster with usable information and we are careful whenever we receive phone calls from financial institutions and always phone back to check the calls out. But it's by no means victimless. It's horrible thinking about people using your personal details, you have to go on Experian or another credit checking agency to make sure that nothing else has been taken out in your name. An old or insecure person could be seriously spooked by it all. In addition we were lucky to have had another card to pay our hotel bill with but I know plenty of young people with just one card and they could have ended up unable to pay the bill and had their break ruined.
As another family member received a message from their mobile phone provider the other day advising them that their billing address had been changed and asking for confirmation that this was correct it is obvious that identity fraud like this is rife and it's time that action is taken to eliminate it. I really don't know how I could have avoided either of these incidents so it has to be time that any financial transactions that rely upon remote identity are made more secure. Barclays use this code number generator for their online banking and if everyone used one of these handy little gadgets for all transactions where they were not present this type of fraud could be decimated. The code generator can only be activated by a PIN and the identity code is used once only (presumably using some sort of algorithm involving dates and card numbers). Just a thought.
Having said all that I am somewhat reluctant to wish Mike Chubbs from our machining department a happy birthday on here but I will thwart the fraudsters by not telling you how old he is today. Mike has been with Instanta for almost as long as I have and has risen from the assembly department to being in charge of our engineering and two CNC lathes. Mike is a keen Evertonian and tells me that he recently took his son Jamie along to a match with him and hopes that that will soon be a regular outing. He was a regular in our five a side football sessions and is a handy central defender. Anyone who has seen the quality of our engineering will be impressed by Mike's standards and I hope that he has a great day today.
I'll close with a mash up of Billy Connolly made up by the brilliant Cassetteboy. Captures the essence of Connolly perfectly. Do not watch if bad language offends.
No comments:
Post a Comment