I am currently writing a paper for my uni course about the impacts of online fraud. If you could spare a few moments and post a comment that would be great!
I am looking for your personal views or 2 cents on the following:

Has online fraud ever affected you or your family, do you trust online banking/ shopping etc and what do you think should be done to improve awareness to the public?

Thanks alot for viewing if you can post then that would be brilliant.

Thanks Jon.

I had £965 spent on my card with Littlewoods Direct without my knowledge.

I also had an Iphone delivered to my house that I hadn’t ordered.

Took hsbc 6 weeks to get around to askign for my money back though.

I actually think that my details were taken at a well known national Hire Shop’s Bath branch but clearly can’t prove anything.

Police weren’t interested in investigating and niether were the two retailers (I had a long row with O2 before they would even accept the phone back).

Speak to your local cop shop or CPU as they might have some data that they can share with you.

I had a random amount for a web conferencing supplier appear on my Amex which was very confusing. Turned out it was actually using a card which had expired years ago too, so quite how it had gone through I’ve no idea.

Amex were good, and refunded me the amount very quickly though.

No other issues, touch wood.

I make the vast majority of my shopping online, and all my banking, and never had any problems.

Hope this helps.

Cheers, Rich

Should have pointed out that this was a conferencing supplier that I’d never heard of up until that point!

I’ve had 4.5k spent(in various amounts)on on-line betting with my debit card. Bank stopped it before it was debited from my account. Never did work out where/how they got hold of my details.

New card issued, no further problems. Hasn’t stopped me using on-line shopping banking etc.

I’ve just had 5-6 little payments taken off my card for phone top-ups, what looks like a taxi firm and registration to a Danish sports club. Nothing over 30, which is why it wasn’t spotted for almost a month.

Halifax have been spot on so far, just going through the disputed payments process.

Matt

bump

Had a call 7 years back from credit card to say ‘have you just bought £4k of electrical goods on the West Coast of the USA, ‘cos we suspect its not you…’

All nipped in the bud, I didn’t even fill in a form or anything.

I actually think that my details were taken at a well known national Hire Shop’s Bath branch but clearly can’t prove anything.

You mean Help Hire? I’ve got a car coming from them tomorrow. I’ve yet to be a victim of fraud yet, although not having alot of money helps on that front I guess 😯

someone tried to put £2400 of computer supplies (judging by the company name who tried to put the transaction through) my CC a while back. CC company flagged it with me on the day of the alledged transaction and sent me a new card. no probs since, am totally fine using credit card online – but I’m careful about the retailers I use.

unfortunately you’ll always have people who fall for scams to get credit card or bank details, no matter what is done to ‘educate’ them, or what measures a bank puts in to try and safe-guard online transactions.

Got ‘done’ for the first time just last week after c.10 years of trouble-free online shopping.

Someone had used my details to spend over £200 with thetrainline.com. Luckily for me, they’d done it just before my CC statement was due so they’d started using it at the END of the month, not the beginning so I picked up on it quickly. Immediately called the CC company who cancelled the card. The day after they bought the train tickets they then made a donation to Cancer Research UK. Which struck me as an odd thing to do with stolen CC details… Then they *tried* to pay a parking fine (or somesuch) but got declined cos my card had just been cancelled.

The transactions in question are now going through the ‘disputes’ procedure.

the charity thing is quite common, its usualy the first thing they do (maybe it took a few days to process?). It shows them the card still works, and you’r unlikely to stop a £5 donation to a charity and probably just assume its something you’ve forgotten about.

I had £200 taken out of one bank account, and the same taken from my credit card. The only company that had access to both details was an online record store, which I will never use again.

Nice tunes though, and good value too.

i have had my entire balance transferred from my account (using some paypal alternative) this was 6 weeks before i graduated when i was working 20hour days to get all my project work inline. and all the bank could do was give me a form to fill in which took several months to get back. luckily i had a very understanding housemate who just bankrolled me indefinatly.

for the amount of online shopping i do i think that i proably get away lightly. when you hear of people getting really ripped off it always seems to be stupid mistakes so perhaps there does need to be more education over it.

my mum had her M&S credit card maxxed out, they kept telling her it must have been cloned, but infact it had sat in her safe for over 6 years unused so the details MUST have come from the CC company.

In 2006, while I was away in BC, someone tried to buy a load of A/V goods online, totalling £3.5k. Thankfully, I had informed Egg that I was away and any transactions outside of Canada were to be held until they had spoken to me directly. They did as asked and I was one of the lucky ones. Egg’s Fraud Team were meant to contact me but they never did, despite various calls to them. Egg did tell me who they goods were ‘bought’ from, so I had a chat with them and they handed details over to the Police. Never heard anything after that.
Egg were very good about it. I’m now RBS (boo-hiss!)but they seem secure, as I’ve not had any issues whatsoever.

Online Banking – I use it a lot and it spot-on. Talking to people about it, most have very basic passwords and aren’t very bothered about online security. ALL of my passwords change every month, which I have to do manually. But it keeps things safer, if not 100%.

My 2 Cents added.

and you’r unlikely to stop a £5 donation to a charity

£5 was indeed the amount they ‘donated’.

As much as we all hate RBS right now, 😉 Streamline (an RBS sub) is the most trusted and secure method of paying by card either online or offline. Nothing is more secure than your hard earned cash though!

Using PayPal is like posting your bank account details in your Facebook profile

Every time I’ve used it (3 times) within 24 hours I have received a spoof email asking me to confirm my bank details – i.e there are corrupt staff at PayPal who pass on details of recent transactions to criminals who then generate the “confirm your account details” emails

Also the Inland Revenue (or whatever the tax people call themselves nowadays)

The last 2 times I rang them about tax issues (because I owed them money), within two days I received a spoof Inland Revenue email confirming that I was due a tax rebate and asking for details of the account that the amount should be credited to – i.e there are corrupt staff at the Inland Revenue who pass on details of recent transactions to criminals who then generate the “confirm your account details” emails

No amount of internet account security measures can protect you against corruption amongst the staff of the organisations who are supposed to protect you

Has online fraud ever affected you or your family, do you trust online banking/ shopping etc and what do you think should be done to improve awareness to the public?

Yes. If affects me indirectly …

If I don’t trust the website I will not buy or pay online. So I only buy from few “trusted” sites otherwise I prefer to use cheque if I can or bank transfer.

🙂

Couldn’t get more spot on there eldridge!