Hang on to your wallets

Hang on to your wallets

www.hfxnews.ca

Fraudulent credit-card transactions totalled almost $3m in Atlantic Canada last year

A company in Hong Kong contacted Currie, owner of Bedford-based Plastic Graphics Cards, after locating his company on the Internet. He was asked to make security swipe cards for truckers in Asia. But, as details for the project slowly changed, Currie became suspicious and called the company to do a little investigating.

That's when the man on the other line dropped the bomb.

The cards were going to be used to commit fraud. "Do you have a problem with that?" the caller asked.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I have to give the students who did the investigation credit (pun).

It's things like this which open our eyes to the unethical practices of international corporations. Note the overall cost in Canada alone:

In total, major Canadian card companies lost $201 million in 2005 to credit-card fraud, according to the Canadian Bankers Association.

www.hfxnews.ca
(visit the link for the full news article)

Hang on to your rubbish

One of the best sources of personal information and credit details for scammers can be found by bin-diving through your household rubbish

Experian, a credit reference agency, commissioned a waste analysis company to examine the contents of 400 domestic bins in Nottingham to show how easy it was for fraudsters to obtain personal information from household rubbish.

They found:
* 72% of bins contained the full name and full address of at least one member of a household
* Two in five contained a whole credit or debit card number that could be linked to an individual
* 80% of these had an associated expiry date
* One in five bins contained a bank account number and sort code that could be related to an individual's name and address
* One bin even contained a signed blank cheque
* Only 8% of households throwing away full card numbers made an attempt to destroy the documents
* Only 14% contained nothing of interest to fraudsters

Out of 71 local authorities in the UK, interviewed by Experian, 80% said that bin raiding was a growing problem.
source

Hi Masqua, today on the news they were showing how theives were stealing credit card numbers by using tiny video cameras the size of a nickle and placing them on ATMs. They were getting individual card holders credit or debit number and password numbers. The announcer said when theives that are using the stolen card number purchase items on the net or phone they do not need the password of course. In this area alone millions of dollars are lost due to credit card fraud.

The next time anyone uses the ATM or gas pump beware of your surroundings especially look out for unusual devices that look out of place like the nickel sized stick on camera. Rik Riley

[edit on 9-5-2007 by rikriley]