Card fraud - surely the police can do something?

inglesito

I was the victim of card fraud on my debit card for the first time this evening. Someone used it to buy a bunch of games from Play.com, and I found out 10 minutes later when I received a confirmation email for the purchase (lucky I was online). I immediately cancelled my card and reported it to my bank, who have passed it on to their fraud department. I then called the police, but they wouldn't give me a crime reference number and said the bank had to deal with it.

Now, I'm not too worried about losing more money in the immediate future, as I think I've taken the necessary steps (I'll also ring Play.com tomorrow to see if I can stop the delivery and the transaction). However, a couple of things are worrying me:

1) I have the purchaser's delivery address that he put into my Play.com account. If this is the case, why don't the police want to take a trip out there and nick him? He's obviously a bit thick if it really is an address he uses to receive these goods!

2) How did he get these details anyway? He must have, as a minimum, my Play.com account sign in details, my card security code and my Verified by Visa password. The rest of the card details were stored on Play.com. I am going nuts worrying how much he knows about me (my address and phone number for sure!)

3) Are there any habits I should be changing. I always think I'm quite careful (shield my PIN, full PC security installed, etc), but maybe I'm leaving myself open to fraud.

It feels like being burgled - you just don't know if they're going to come back again :sad:

Paul_Herring

This has been noted in the financial press before - the police aren't interested in these sorts of crimes, preferring to leave it to the financial industry to put their house in order.

Another end result of this is there is no centralised place to obtain fraud figures.

KILL_BILL

kinda of make you beleive what the police do all day

i dont mean that all the police are laszy arsed gits but theres is a majority of them which just sit around drinking tea and not doing much else

lets not forget that the 2 police officers/detectives who did not bother to investiagate when that bloke got his face slashed by two teenage thugs and as a result this guy was kicked to death

the officers concerned where made to resign rather than being sacked and now they have been reinsatated

no wonder people dont report things to the police.

but going back to the op original posting - how did they get hold of you email address and card ?