Debit card details stolen, now I am in debt, Help!

lyla

this happened to me too. 5 online betting transactions to the tune of £1200 which also went well over my overdraft limit - it all happened in the space of one morning so luckily the fraud department picked it up and telephoned me about it. i was in same position as you, no money and loads of direct debits to go out and i was in a real panic and speaking to the bank on the phone got me nowhere with regards to sorting it out (overseas customer service!)the next day i went into my local bank and they were much more helpful. the money never actually went out of my account because the fraud department put a hold on it, i got a bigger overdraft just incase and new cards issued, had to fill in a form saying which transactions were not mine and that was that - all sorted.

hope they can sort out your problem too.

**purplemoon**

I'm sorry to hear so many of you have been a victim of fraud, I too have in the past, so wanted to offer some advice especially to those of you shopping on the internet. If you have access to a credit card then you really should use that rather than a debit card, thus protecting your money in the bank. If a credit card is used fraudulently it's not your money they are stealing but the banks, and you won't be financially affected by the loss whilst they sort it all out.

If you don't have a credit card then you really should think about applying for one, even a high interest starter card with a low limit such as Barclaycard Initial would be good if you have poor or no credit history as you would pay it off every month anyway and not incur any charges.

I find the easiest way to do this is to pay for everything by credit card (if you have a cashback card then you also earn money too!) transfering the same amount from my current account into an e-saver, which acts as a holding account until my credit card bill arrives, then transfer it back to my current account to pay off my credit card bill.

I never use my debit card for online transactions or ATM withdrawals anymore. If I need cash I ask for cashback in the shop whilst making a transaction, or go into my bank to withdraw larger amounts. Oh, and I always use cash when paying for petrol/goods in a garage as these are notorious for stealing card details!

debs626

Ok here is an update .............. rang the DWP and they said yes we will consider giving you a crisis loan as long as you have a crime incident number. So then phoned the police to report the crime, had to give all details of transactions ect and what the bank were doing and how I come to discover the money missing also what I thought had happend. Rang back the DWP with Crime number and someone is going to ring tomorrow to interview me. The lady said that they would only give out a cheque to cover money for food until my next payday. I'm not holding my breath but anything is better than nothing.

pink_phantom

I am pretty sure that the DSS will give you a crisis loan as theft is one of the criteria options. Either that or a budgeting loan.

debs626

Have had the phone interview with the DWP crisis loan dept and they said that they could give me a loan £4.40 to last until my next pay day. My next payday is friday as I will be payed early for next weeks benefit as Monday is a bank holiday. I tried to explain to them although I will be getting payed on friday, the money will be swollowed up by the overdraft, I cant cancel my benefits going into the bank as then my direct debits will bounce and I will occur charges for that too. Anyway to cut a long story short I said thanks for your time and effort but I like to decline from you offer, basically its not worth the time and effort.

Anthillmob

£4.40???????????? :mad: :mad: :mad:

that aint worth a !!!!. if you pardon my language.

debs626

Sorry, £4.40 each, there are two of us, still £8.80 dont buy much but its enough. It would have cost the DWP more to process ect.

Astaroth

No matter what anyone does it is easy enough to get a credit or debit card number to use fraudulantly....

For credit cards, the first 6 numbers identify the company that issues the card so there is only a finite combination of these. The last set of digits are check sums (there is a formula to work out these numbers which saves the ATM/ POS machine connecting to the network when a card number is obviously wrong) and therefore there is only actually 8 numbers on a card that truely vary between customers.

As ATM/ POS have software to validate a card using a formula it isnt hard to rewrite that forumla to generate the check sum digits when you feed in the 6 issuer identifier numbers and the 8 randomly generated numbers which then gives you a valid credit card number (though of cause whilst it is a valid number it may not actually be issued to anyone).

Whilst many sites/ companies claim to have a massive amount of security in place for card transactions (eg validate your home address etc) this isnt always the case (in all the years I have been online only once has a card transaction been declined due to the fact I used my work address as my "home" address even though the majority have said that I must use my home address as they validate it with my card issuer). So you take your massive list of Halifax One card numbers that your computer has generated in a few seconds and then tell it to go to a website that you know has low security and ask it to randomly put through small transaction amounts varying the expiry date for the next 3 years, if it returns an authorised payment you can then create a clone card and if all the payments get declined you then dispose of the number and put it down to an unissued number.

An associate who was writting a thesis on internet and banking security wrote a program to test this out and found it was producing on average 20 - 30 credit cards an hour (he was using a lot of "bouncing" of requests to hid his tracks - plus all were to a dummy system so nothing was actually charged to anyone etc)

The one time that I have been a victim of fraud my card issuer identified the odd transaction and called me to ask if I had made it. Money was refunded within 2 weeks but understandably they couldnt make refunds etc until I had signed a form confirming it wasnt me that had made the transactions (and I may not have been very quick in sending the form off)

Dammam

£4.40 - that's ridiculous Debs!
Take the overdraft option, as it wont cost you anything - I think the bank will give you the facility free once the investigation is sorted.



Khobar.

debs626

Well its the 17th of october and I have still not received any money back into my bank account. I rang the Halifax fraud department, waited in a que, my details were taken and I was kept on silent hold for just over 20 mins to be told that they have made the necessary investigations and that the transaction made with air france was indeed not my doing, then was told that it would be another 7 - 10 working days before the money would be credited into my bank account. AAARRRGGG. when I asked about the other smaller amounts she said that she could not coment about those transactions as she had not details of them AAARRRGGG.

The thing that stinks and anoys me the most, is if it were my credit card details that had been stolen, all of this would have been delt with swiftly and efficiently.

who do I complain to ??? anyone know ?

Thanks in advance