Credit card cloning

[PaulRT]

Hi All
We have just returned from an excellent month's tour of France. However, on our return HSBC alerted me to fraud on my credit card from the previous day. This is being followed up and hopefully I will be credited for the fraudulent transactions.
My last valid purchase on the card was for diesel at the Auchan outside Boulogne. As in many French supermarket petrol stations, the procedure at the 'Caisse' is that you hand your card to the cashier, who inserts it in his machine and you punch your PIN into a handset outside. As this was the only occasion when the card went out of my sight, my strong suspicion is that this was when it was cloned. The fraudulent transactions started 2 days later.
I am posting this to see if anyone else has had this recent experience. The lesson (probably) is to use the card payment at the pumps instead of at the Caisse - almost all of these now accept UK credit cards.
Cheers
Paul

 

[Lutz]

I don't think there is any need to blame yourself for allowing the credit card out of your sight (although keeping an eye on it obviously reduces the risk). It is quite possible that the cashier was not aware of the cloning either, but the data from the card was intercepted somewhere between the cashier and the bank. This has been known to have happened before.

 

[JoannaLesley]

All very well, Paul, but we came unstuck a couple of times using cards at pumps. The first time we did it, it worked fine and we thought wey hey, great - especially after the best part of 20 years KNOWING they wouldn't work. However, that was on a motorway in the north of France. As we moved further south, we found it didn't seem to work. Neither did it work at the payage north of Toulouse, although it worked at one further north. So beware and make sure you always have an alternative method of payment.

Jo

 

[ValA.]

Paul - what was the evidence of fraud? I've just had an unauthorised transaction from my card, used just once recently in a supermarket in France. The transaction was via PayPal (not a spoof email but a real payment) for something I never ordered - 14 months of web-hosting from a German company!

 

[emmerson]

We had this happen to both of our debit cards last year, with £350 being taken from Herself's HSBC account, but Barclays were too quick for them, so they got nowt out of mine. Herself was re-imbursed the £350, but not the £20 fee forgoing in the red!
This year we only used Barclaycard, except for cash withdrawals, when we used debit cards, but only inside banks.
The banks immediately stopped our cards, but fortunately we still had our credit cards to get us home.
We suspect that the cloning occurred at a bank in a small village near st Omer, which had a large van parked outside in a narrow street. Looking back now, it did look suspicious. Ain't hindsight wonderful?

 

[PaulRT]

Hi Val
The evidence for the fraud was that there were a number of transactions on my account, entirely for internet purchases, that I had never actioned. They were all in a 24-36 hr period after I had last used the card at Auchan. The HSBC system identified them as suspicious and put a stop on the card and phoned me.
Thanks for the responses.
Cheers
Paul

 

[StevePeters]

Touch wood I have never had this problem, my bank currently provides free a txt message whenever a card transation is carried out abroad. This normaly arrives just a I am leaving the garage or store, on a weekend it may be dealyed as it depends when it is debited from the account. The key point is if you have not carried out the transaction you just call the number on the txt and they will do the rest.

 

[Stephen Whitehurst]

I have just read your info. about a text from your Bank for overseas transactions. As I am sick of the "service" I receive from my current bank, I would be extremely interested to know to which Bank you are referring! Would you be happy to print it on the Forum? If so, I would be delighted. With thanks Redboots

 

[DianneT]

We also have this service from our bank which is LloydsTSB

 

[StevePeters]

Lloyds TSB

 

[Jennifer2]

I had a call yesterday from Halifax to say they had just declined 2 transactions on my Clarity credit card. It does not have a big limit and is used mainly for day-to-day shopping. It is occasionally used on-line, OH had used it only 3 days earlier to buy printer ink.

The transactions were large....£900 to Dell, and £445 to Ikea...... both via internet, so my security code was used. Merchants where we have shopped on-line must be the prime suspects. We also used both our Clarity cards extensively in Europe in May/June.

The card has been cancelled and a new one is on its way, so well spotted Halifax. Helps to make up for the £1450 they let through on our current account last year! We did however get that refunded within a couple of days.

I have had 3 previous problems with credit cards, one where Barclaycard stopped the card after my number was found on a random list found in a police raid somewhere, one where Barclaycard rang me to query some transactions from Italy, which they had declined and which were fraudulent. When they read back the list of recent transactions we found more that weren't ours. The third one was when some currency exchange place in London charged 100 euros on my card, never got an explanation for that but did get the money back eventually.

Never ended up out of pocket, but could do without the hassle it brings!

 

[RayS]

Just got round to reading this after some time away. Have you considered using a pre-pay card such as caxtonfx which effectively blocks any link to your main account. OK you can still loose the balance on the card, but it is so easy to update this by txt that you only need keep a small amount on it.