HD911.com
because the 90's paled in comparison to this...

I knew before I went away on holiday that there was going to be a tough couple of weeks money wise, until pay started flowing in from work again. So we’re on a tight budget, but we’re managing (just barely) to raise the cash to pay the months rent and other bills.

This is all fair enough, you have a fun time on holiday and don’t leave a fair chunk of money for when you get back and no doubt, you’ll have problems.

And then HSBC called me today:

“Hello, Mr Carver? My names <insert here> from the HSBC Fraud Protection Department, you’re not in Italy at the moment by any chance are you?”

Turns out somone’s managed to skim my card, most probably when we were in Amsterdam 10 days ago, collected the card details, and made a fake copy, then proceeded to take money out from four ATM’s in Italy. I’m not quite sure of the actual amount that was successfully withdrawn, but an attempt was made to take out £1,500!

Card Skimmer

I’ve heard of skimming before, but most of the scams I’d heard of involving fraudulently used cards, but I was under the impression most of the physical theft was done using stolen cards and overlooked PIN’s. However, this is not the case, it seems, and HSBC said that this is happening more and more recently.

Which begs the question, what is the point of this Chip & Pin stuff, if the card can still be used (and copied ?!?!?!) completely via the magnetic strip aka 1980.

So, now the accounts locked, I’m £300 out of pocket, and unable to pay the rent. Fantastic!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Life, Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.