Cloned debit card!!!

[MJG]

Just come back from a very nice week on the Norfolk Broads and whilst I was away our dog sitter informed me I had received a call from my bank's fraud protection service wanting to speak to me.

Didn't think much more of it until I went to make a £6.50 purchase this afternoon to find my card declined and requiring authorisation.

When I got to speak to my bank it turned out their system had picked up a small number of declined transactions on my debit card, one being a £2 donation to Oxfam (I don't give to Oxfam) and another being a £20 top up on o2 (I don't have an O2 mobile) - neither had gone through as all the details didn't match up. However my card had been 'frozen' until they could get to speak to me.

As I was able to confirm neither were my transactions the card has now been blocked completely and a replacement is on it's way.

I am (or at least I thought I was) scrupulous about which internet sites I shop on, I am sensitive to making sure my card doesn't go out of sight whilst paying in retailers thus avoiding it being skimmed and I always check ATM's for dodgy skimming devices fitted to them. I keep my McAfee virus protection up to date so I am completely mystified as to how someone has got hold of my card details - thanks to the vigilance of my bank nothing worse happened.

Lets be careful out their........

[CERICROWLEY]

It has happened to me now twice in about three years, the fraud department are no wiser how the details can be taken, it could well be an employee of the company if it is not used on the internet etc.

I have now been informed that is it wise to change your debit card on a regular basis before the expiry date on the card. this way the card number changes every time.

[christhear]

It happened to us recently, someone tried to purchase I tunes with it. Apparently this is a favourite first purchase. Trouble was we got new cards and purchased some I tunes ourselves and our card was temporarily forzen again. Managed to sort it out though. No idea where the details were obtained from.

[BIGEYE]

You seem to be taking as much care a you possibly can MJG, however, I will offer three pieces of advice:
1. Get rid of McAfee and get a proper AV program. Suggest Kaspersky.
2. Get yourself Anti Spyware program. Probably Webroot Spysweeper is as good as any.
3. Download, install & keep updated Spywareblaster & Spybot S&D.

No one program protects from everything, but the above is probably as good as it gets.

There will always be some risk whenever you use plastic.

[MJG]

Thanks for the comments - this has got me started thinking about using a pre-paid top up debit card purely for my on-line purchases again, they charge fees but they do seem a safer bet when shopping on line.

[E. Cosgrove]

This has happened to me twice recently, once with my credit card which also showed a donation to Oxfam, and once with my debit card which was stopped because I used it at a cash machine which was later found to have been tampered with.
Both times the banks were on top of it so I didn't loose out.

[janny]

We had our cc cloned in Washington earlier in the year -the only time it was out of our sight was in an Olive Garden .The first we knew was when we got e mails from Curry's Tesco and Amazon saying we had purchased 2 laptops and a phone totaling £1000.We immediately rang our card issuer who told us we could go on using it [msnoo] and we also contacted the companies involved to tell them the purchases were fraudulent but no one really cared even though the goods had not been dispatched they would not stop them .We rang the Birmingham police in the UK as the goods were being delivered to an address there and they weren't interested either.Talk about assisting the crooks!
The reason no one was bothered was because of new legislation the card holder cannot now be left at a disadvantage regards to misuse of their cards -in other words the company pays and so no one seems to worry about it.

[Y]

Our Nationwide cc was used to make cash withdrawals totalling £3000 from cash machines in London and South Africa.The strange thing was the card had just been re-issued because the original wasn't working.
We had been given a new pin number and had not even used the replacement card so there was no way anybody could have cloned it or copied our pin number. The original card had supposedly been cancelled but we never did get to the bottom of how it happened.
Nationwide refunded us the money but didn't really seem interested even though they had let somebody make 4 large cash withdrawals on our card all on the same day.

[ellie]

We had a number of small amounts taken from our credit card recently which the credit company picked up quickly and questioned. Although the amounts were small they mounted up. We are 100% sure who used our details as the card was only used to purchase one item and the US company concerned had asked for our details over the phone as they said our credit card was not accepted online.

We believe the details of our credit card were written down and accessed by an employee who then used them to order numerous items on the internet. We told the CC company all the details but they were not interested. They could have traced where the items were sent.

Luckily they repaid the full amount, but it is staggering that they don't want to know who the perpetrators were of this fraud. No wonder they can get away with it.

[florida4sun]

I changed to AVG from mcafee and it was a nightmare. Back with mcafee now....

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by BIGEYE
You seem to be taking as much care a you possibly can MJG, however, I will offer three pieces of advice:
1. Get rid of McAfee and get a proper AV program. Suggest Kaspersky.
2. Get yourself Anti Spyware program. Probably Webroot Spysweeper is as good as any.
3. Download, install & keep updated Spywareblaster & Spybot S&D.

No one program protects from everything, but the above is probably as good as it gets.

There will always be some risk whenever you use plastic.
[/quote]