[Scottish] Fraudulent Internet use of my debit card

[Kyle Gordon]

On Thursday 17 July 2008 10:23, William Anderson wrote:
> John Gordon Ollason wrote:
> > I suppose it's inevitable, but my bank statement came back this month
> > and somebody had spent £3000 of my money purchasing stuff on my debit
> > card using the Internet.
> >
> > In the last 6 months the only other purchase I made on the Internet was
> > to Amazon UK.
> >
> > What is the likelihood that I have picked up malicious javascript or
> > whatever?
>
> If you've *only* bought stuff from amazon with this card, something is
> afoot at amazon.  I find both those deductions to be unlikely.
>
> If you've bought stuff with the card in person from shops as well as
> buying stuff from amazon (more likely), your card has been skimmed or
> cloned, likely by an uberdodgy person behind a till somewhere.
>
> Internet purchasing fraud doesn't necessarily involve you feeding your
> card number into a website, just the use of your card number and not by
> you; the theft can begin at a bricks and mortar point of sale too.
>
> -n
>
^ Wot he sez

Anything you order over the phone as well could in theory be duplicated. It's 
just another Cardholder Not Present transaction. Talk to the bank, find out 
when the spending started. You may be able to narrow it down to Daft Thing 
You Bought Over the Phone(tm) several months ago.

Another thing to watch is those card terminals you have to punch your PIN 
number into. Apart from the fact that they can be compromised in an amazingly 
short time, merchants love nothing more than to take your card away and swipe 
it through the machine themselves 'for your convenience'. Recently Charlotte 
bought a curry on her card, and dutifully checked over the machine before 
entering her number. As soon as the machine said "Approved" the merchant took 
the machine and card out of her hands and into the back shop for 5 minutes - 
with no explanation. The card was cancelled within 10 minutes, and hopefully 
the merchant now has a black mark against him.

No doubt sjmurdoch will be able to elaborate on why we even have a banking 
system that allows this kind of practice.

Cheers

Kyle