back to article Foreign losses jack UK plastic fraud up to £535.2m

Fraud abroad has pushed up losses on UK credit and debit cards following a two year fall, according to the latest stats from UK payments association APACS. Card fraud losses last year rose 25 per cent from £427m in 2006 to reach a total of £535.2m last year, an increase mainly explained by a £90.5m rise in fraud overseas by …

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  1. Jon

    Why can't I...

    I've never understood why there isn't some nifty online interface through my bank's web site where I can allow/disallow purchases from specific countries or regions. I can assure my bank and Visa that if I ever travel to Nigeria I will be sure to let them know in advance...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Why cant he....

    @Jon your dead right of course and that is clear common sence, why dont they indeed.

    maybe because for fruads they do catch they make a profit out of the retailer. Maybe they also make profit against frauds thru factoring the debt thru many of there owned finance houses, as well as tax right off's. Just maybe.

    But a simple idea would be that all online transactions would require you to goto the banks site and authorise them as well, 2 phase commit :>. Indeed having a seperate card number foronline transactions or indeed a disposable set of numbers.

    Personaly I would like to see these fraud statistics in relation to how much the bank actualy got stung vs what the customer got stung by. I'd also like to see this in relationship towards the actualy amount of money invested in countering fraud by the banks.

    Now those extra details alone I feel would make a far far far better read and insight into fraud. can we have those as well, pretty please.

  3. Parax

    why cant I

    because the machine in Nigeria cant check the UK system before the bank has already paid. in otherwords you cant stop the transaction until its too late, the whole system works on trust not technology.

  4. Bayleaf
    Thumb Down

    @ Jon

    I suggested to my bank that they add a check box to their web site disabling the creation of new payees - I have already got all those I need set up. Once selected, I would have to ask my bank via a letter to re-enable creating new payees. That way, even if somebody did get my online banking details, they could not benefit from them.

    The result - nothing.

  5. Steven Jones

    Credit Card fraud

    Having had my card compromised twice in the space of four months, I'm getting familiar with this. Manning petrol stations and the like with short term staff who are her one week and gone the next doesn't help.

    There clearly are ways of stopping cards being used abroad, at least for larger amounts, as I know a number of people who have been caught out this way when they haven't informed their bank and they can't get transactions authorised.

    However, until we have a system of one-time passwords, then the whole credit and debit card system is vulnerable to replay attacks. In the interim, it strikes me that a sensible idea would be to allow customers to register a mobile phone number against their cards and receive an SMS every time there is an attempt to use it. It won't actually stop a fraudulent transaction, but it would certainly bring attention to it a lot faster. It would be easy to be able to return a message to alert the credit card company to a potential fraud.

    That's until the credit card companies come up with a much more secure system. However, given the cost and length of time to get chip & pin in I wouldn't hold my breath.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    New payees

    My bank's system requires that I create a new payee every time the reference I need to include in a payment changes.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Paul Gray

    Generally the customers and banks don't get stung at all (the bank still makes interest off the transfers), it's the unfortunate company that sold the goods that gets f----d pushing more then one small etailer out of business - as they have to refund the money and often lose their stock and what do the authorities do? Naff all.

  8. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. Bob Gender
    Heart

    Tuxedo

    Cryptome.org posted the industry-only brief in this a couple of weeks ago - keep up at the back.

    I've had 2 bank (ie debit) cards ripped off in the last 3 months, have to say that Smile were very nice about it (instantly reversed all the transactions over the phone) whereas Barclays made me fill out forms, and review my own statements, and said that more charges may appear in the future.

    Needless to say I'm still waiting for PayPal to refund me.

    Anyhoo, as a result I have now switched to using a credit card exclusively online (they shoulder the risk and refunds are instant) and a Tuxedo prepaid card (or more likely cash) offline. My debit cards have been cancelled and replaced by cashpoint-only cards.

    Chip And Pin (aka "Fuck you, liability isn't with us any more!!!11") led me to do this - thanks, APACs!

    Valentines to reflect CNP intro date

  10. heystoopid
    Paris Hilton

    Credit card fraud is peanuts

    The fraud on credit cards is small potatoes and the tip of the iceberg when compared to the actual losses from bad lending and other currency trading problems !

    They use these figures as a form of catch 22 to reduce company tax rates even though a majority of the figure is not a real loss in any sense of the word but few governments have properly trained corporate tax audit teams to sniff out the discrepancies in the banks bulk detailed annual returns documentation and rely on large past scandal plagued accounting firms such as KPMG and Ernst Young to be honest and above board in all their summation documents !

    Besides which they highlight the word fraud in order to divert the sheeple share holders away from reading another set of larger figures in very small print further down the page on the annual return sent out to all every twelve months !

  11. Chris

    Temporary Online Cards

    Back when I first started using Paypal (and one reason I did instead of my bank) for my credit (ie, fake debit) card they had an option that would generate a single use number for online purchases. Was perfect! Worked well for a time, until the time the credit card companies started wanting CVV numbers off the back off the card too for online purchases and the online feature didn't have that - Making it useless. Ahh well. Don't know why more places don't use this idea. Would be great for those services that you aren't sure if they are going to suddenly turn around and charge you a monthly fee.

  12. Colin G

    When buying on-line, use a webcard

    One precaution that can be taken when buying on-line is the use of Cahoot's webcard. This generates a one-time credit card number with a low limit. If someone does get access to the number after you have used it, it will not be valid.

    Before you ask, I am not a Cahoot employee - I have just been using the Webcard to protect my transactions for several years.

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