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back to article Cardiff tops UK plastic fraud list

Cardiff has displaced London as the worst place in the UK for card fraud, according to a new survey of fraud hotspots. More than a third (37 per cent) of residents of the Welsh capital have been victims of card fraud at least once since 2007, according to an annual update to a Card Fraud Index maintained by CPP, which sells …

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  1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    Woman abducted in strange blue box

    A Dr Martha Jones claims to have been tricked into "travelling in time and space" by the owner of an unlicensed vehicle who is a suspect in the credit fraud case. Apparently he uses "psychedelic paper" which contains a drug that convinces victims that a document is what it ought to be, e.g. a cheque, and that lured Dr Jones into the suspect's "police box" for an unspecified period of time. Relatives say that Dr Jones's whereabouts were unknown last month for 37 seconds, although mobile phone records indicate that she spent the time at several locations in and around Cardiff while believing it to be London. The authenticity of a series of videos and books describing Dr Jones's many "adventures" with the mysterious man was said to be "undetermined". Especially the fan fiction, and I think you know what I'm talking about.

    Credit payment workers are advised to wear gloves, and ear protection, as the suspect apparently also performs acou-terrorism using a "sonic screwdriver" if the thing with the paper doesn't work. He is also said to "want to mate", so better have some protection for that as well.

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  2. irish donkey
    Megaphone

    cardholders were sometimes their own worst enemy

    When I had money stolen from my Bank Card the bank tried to firmly point the finger at me.

    Their finger quivered a bit when I pointed that I have never used my card or pin so the fault must lie with them. The account was just used for cheques and electronic transfers.

    They immediately refunded all my money and apoligised. I wonder how difficult it would have been if it had of been one of my other cards which I do regularly use. I'm still waiting to hear the results of their investigation.

    Just because its your card doesn't mean you are the one that has been careless.

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  3. Jimbo 6
    Joke

    "Cardiff tops UK plastic fraud list"

    ... I thought you were talking about Bulgarian airbags.

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  4. Skrrp

    We're no 1. Yayy!

    Cardiff Central Station is a known hotspot for Lebanese Loopers, we get warnings through internal news about it every couple of months

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  5. Cameron Colley
    FAIL

    This simply cannot be!

    Chip 'n' PIN, that great music-hall act, have put a stop to all card crime, surely? After all, it is now impossible to use a credit or debit card without a PIN, isn't it? What? You mean that Chip and PIN has made no difference? People can still take card details and use them online etc. without knowing the all-powerful PIN?

    Surely it's not possible that Chip and Pin wasn't ever supposed to be a solution to credit card fraud, but simply a way to push the blame onto the consumer?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Here we go...

      Chip and pin is only designed to prevent card present fraud, it prevents cards being cloned which was trivially easy with the magstripe, hence why pretty much all card present fraud goes on in countries who don't use chip and pin. The amount of card present fraud was slashed with the adoption of chip and pin. The only card present fraud in this country occurs where magstripe is used.

      It's not a banking conspiracy to make the customer pay, it's to stop the bank's (and by which read: The bank's customers) having to shell out to cover the fraud in the first place.

      Case in point: I know two people who've had their cards cloned - One had his account wiped out and actually told the bank that he'd written his pin down, he got no compensation. The other hadn't written down his pin and the same bank had the money back in his account within a couple of hours.

      Just because it doesn't do everything doesn't mean it's a failure.

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  6. Chris King
    FAIL

    Sometimes, it's not the cardholder's fault...

    ...my card was flagged for extra security checks after someone tried to fradulently purchase songs from the iTunes Store, which I never use anyway. It was a small-value purchase, probably to check that the card details were genuine before attempting to max it out.

    I phoned my card issuer, who put me straight through to the fraud department. They asked me the usual security questions - had I written the PIN on the card, had I let anyone else use it etc etc - and they decided that I was as paranoid about my personal security as they were !

    An on-line store that I had used just once had had their web server cracked, and the order database - complete with full card numbers - was stored unencrypted on the same system. They kept rather quiet about that little blunder, until I started receiving spam on the tagged e-mail address I had given them.

    That's right, the crackers made extra money on the side by selling a list of e-mail addresses they had lifted off the server !

    Words Were Had, and the vendor promptly owned up, but I had already replaced the card by then anyway so the details were useless.

    On-line stores can blather all they like about that little padlock in the corner of the browser window, but it's pointless if they don't bother to store customer details securely after the order is placed.

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  7. ravenviz Silver badge
    Stop

    Card fraud

    It's amazing how upset some merchants become when you don't even let them hold your card, like you're accusing them of being criminals. Sometimes I have to stand there holding the card out of reach until they say, "I need your card" and I say, "I can't let you have it for security reasons", then the trouble starts. Most vendors now do have the (new fangled) remote card readers but I still am in doubt about those, how do I know the signals are not being picked up elsewhere? Safest is probably cash you got out of a bank via a cashiers cheque and you never take your cards anywhere. But we're soon to be cashless aren't we?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Woohoo, FTW

      Nice to be on the bleeding edge for a change, I'm cashless already.

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  8. Ralph B
    Pint

    Taffy was a Welshman ...

    ... and according to the available documentation, I believe the I appropriate course of action is to 1) jump upon their Sunday hat and poke it with a pin; 2) stuff their socks with sawdust and fill their shoes with clay; 3) hang their coat and trousers to roast before a fire.

    <== It's Brains You Need.

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  9. OFI

    ATMs

    Had my card cloned at an ATM around 2 years ago :in Cardiff -(

    Luckily the bank caught it as there was a strange charge attempted against the 'Russian Federation' or something.. so they cancelled it for me. Unfortunately it was days before Christmas.

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  10. VinceH
    FAIL

    How to negate the benefits of SSL

    @Chris King "On-line stores can blather all they like about that little padlock in the corner of the browser window, but it's pointless if they don't bother to store customer details securely after the order is placed."

    It's worse than that. How often, when ordering something online, do you look at the submission form? I have seen some which, despite being a secure site, then proceed to email the cleartext details - including the credit card details - to the shop for manual credit card processing.

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  11. Bassey

    How much?

    Over 30%? I don't know anyone who has ever suffered from Credit Card fraud. Someone tried to transfer money out of my PayPal account once but, as it emailed me to tell me, that got stopped within about five minutes. I genuinely find it difficult to believe one third of all adults have been defrauded using a credit card. Especially given that most elderly people don't trust debit cards - let along credit cards - and so don't posses them.

    PS I still find it unbelievable that banks\credit card companies will phone me up and ask ME for my security details (the one exception I've come across being smile). They get a short, sharp response from me when they do!

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  12. Blue eyed boy
    Flame

    Down yere in Kairdiff

    we're not all thieves we're not, so don't go gettin' all chopsy an' tarrin' us all wi' the same brush. Ach-y-fi. There's noce people yere too there is you know.

    And me? A credit card virgin. (Note the order of the words.)

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  13. Gomez
    Thumb Down

    Great Percentages Bad Numbers!

    37% of people in Cardiff have had their cards compromised since 2007 is a very scary headline. Or rather it was until I looked at the original source to see that the survey had only asked 73 people in the first place.

    How the hell can 73 people be a representative sample? As usual it's all in the detail (that most news reports choose to leave out). Bad press, bad!

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