ID Theft victim
Discussion
Helloooo,
My Mrs has seemingly had her card cloned/ details stolen.
She received a call yesterday morning from Phones 4 U asking when she would be picking up the second phone she wanted. Alarm bells started ringing and after a bit of delving and a few phone calls it turns out that a woman went into P4U and asked for 2 iPhones on contract, they carried out a credit check by using the debit card the woman had (I didn't even realise they could credit check through a debit card) and gave her a phone but they would only let her have 1 phone a day so asked her to pop back the following day (yesterday)
She called EE and was told they had taken 1 phone on EE and another on Orange. I called O2 (as I'm a customer) and there were 2 online orders with them too. Vodafone and 3 have no record of a contract in her name luckily.
She contacted her bank to cancel her card and also check if any transactions had taken place, luckily there weren't any (we will keep monitoring this week for anything new) The issue with reporting this is that my Mrs has not lost any money (yet) so it seems nobody really knows what to do.
She had a call this afternoon from a finance company to her work about Jewellery that she wanted on finance so the woman is still at it.
What can we do? This woman seemingly knows my other ½'s name, address and D.O.B. I know about CIFAS warnings on her credit file but am concerned this will affect her ability to obtain credit in the future.
Any suggestions welcomed.
Thank you
Nathan
My Mrs has seemingly had her card cloned/ details stolen.
She received a call yesterday morning from Phones 4 U asking when she would be picking up the second phone she wanted. Alarm bells started ringing and after a bit of delving and a few phone calls it turns out that a woman went into P4U and asked for 2 iPhones on contract, they carried out a credit check by using the debit card the woman had (I didn't even realise they could credit check through a debit card) and gave her a phone but they would only let her have 1 phone a day so asked her to pop back the following day (yesterday)
She called EE and was told they had taken 1 phone on EE and another on Orange. I called O2 (as I'm a customer) and there were 2 online orders with them too. Vodafone and 3 have no record of a contract in her name luckily.
She contacted her bank to cancel her card and also check if any transactions had taken place, luckily there weren't any (we will keep monitoring this week for anything new) The issue with reporting this is that my Mrs has not lost any money (yet) so it seems nobody really knows what to do.
She had a call this afternoon from a finance company to her work about Jewellery that she wanted on finance so the woman is still at it.
What can we do? This woman seemingly knows my other ½'s name, address and D.O.B. I know about CIFAS warnings on her credit file but am concerned this will affect her ability to obtain credit in the future.
Any suggestions welcomed.
Thank you
Nathan
JB8 said:
eybic said:
I laughed when he used DPA as an excuse and he said it has been passed onto their fraud team who will take "appropriate action"
It's not really very responsible, giving an understandably cheesed off victim of I'D theft details of the perpetrators. 
.DPA not applicable here, because said personal info isn't present (it's just a picture)
... I'd be escalating this to manager then their manager etc until they stop telling lies about DPA.JB8 said:
eybic said:
I laughed when he used DPA as an excuse and he said it has been passed onto their fraud team who will take "appropriate action"
It's not really very responsible, giving an understandably cheesed off victim of I'D theft details of the perpetrators. aw51 121565 said:
Aye, all that personal information contained in a picture of an alleged perpetrator which can be used to identify a living individual .
DPA not applicable here, because said personal info isn't present (it's just a picture) ... I'd be escalating this to manager then their manager etc until they stop telling lies about DPA.
DPA applies to CCTV images. .DPA not applicable here, because said personal info isn't present (it's just a picture)
... I'd be escalating this to manager then their manager etc until they stop telling lies about DPA.Though its use in potential court proceedings exempts it.
eybic said:
What can we do? This woman seemingly knows my other ½'s name, address and D.O.B. I know about CIFAS warnings on her credit file but am concerned this will affect her ability to obtain credit in the future.
If it helps at all around your original question, I've been done before and as you suggested had CIFAS markers put on my credit file to stop whoever it was who decided they wanted to be me for the day in their tracks. This stopped any more successful attempts at obtaining credit, so I suggest speaking to Experian et al. to get this sorted asap (if you haven't already done so). It took a few months of speaking to credit file companies, and the various companies the fraudsters tried to obtain credit from, however I did manage to get all the errouneous transactions and applications removed from my credit file. It's definitely a pain when this happens, but fixable and shouldn't cause any permanent black marks on your other half's credit file.Get the free 30 day Experian check as a start so you can keep an eye on things, it may be worth keeping it going for a few months to be sure nothing else is going on, and give you peace of mind.
Post-fix, get a decent shredder if you don't have one already
P4U's fraud team are a pretty serious bunch of quite well paid ex police/investigators (well they were when I was there) and I suspect they will have a good idea who this person is shortly.
As for now, just make sure you destroy all bank statements etc from now on before putting them in the bin etc.
It's a nightmare when it happens, do you have any ID protection services with the bank/credit card you could call?
As for now, just make sure you destroy all bank statements etc from now on before putting them in the bin etc.
It's a nightmare when it happens, do you have any ID protection services with the bank/credit card you could call?
This article is from down under but the advice applies just as much to the UK.
http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/index.phtml/ta...
You might be amazed how much information people give away on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Couple that with information already in the public domain and it's all too easy for a determined fraudster.
One of those buying expensive goods is one thing but taking out loans and defaulting can increase the risk to your creditworthiness exponentially.
Look what happened to this guy simply as a result of losing his passport.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance...
For a real horror story though Google Simon Bunce.
http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/index.phtml/ta...
You might be amazed how much information people give away on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Couple that with information already in the public domain and it's all too easy for a determined fraudster.
One of those buying expensive goods is one thing but taking out loans and defaulting can increase the risk to your creditworthiness exponentially.
Look what happened to this guy simply as a result of losing his passport.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance...
For a real horror story though Google Simon Bunce.
My wife's debit card got cloned for the second time last week. Odd thing is we use my cards online etc so we have no idea how it always her one that gets cloned. The account we have with Lloyds covers us for this sort of thing anyway and I have to say in this times of constant bank bashing, Lloyds have always been fantastic at spotting this. Last time they called her when a transaction for over £500 went through at TKMax - how the f
k can you spend £500 there anyway!!! This time around she got a text from them, called them to find out what was going on to find someone had used her card for a pay day loan. Lloyds arranged a conference call between them, her and the loan company only to find the loan company didn't want to discus anything. Their only response was "get a crime number". Which she has now done. Lloyds has obviously fenced the money, cancelled the card and issued a new one.
I would recommend getting crime numbers for each incident and getting this flagged with your cc company and bank
k can you spend £500 there anyway!!! This time around she got a text from them, called them to find out what was going on to find someone had used her card for a pay day loan. Lloyds arranged a conference call between them, her and the loan company only to find the loan company didn't want to discus anything. Their only response was "get a crime number". Which she has now done. Lloyds has obviously fenced the money, cancelled the card and issued a new one. I would recommend getting crime numbers for each incident and getting this flagged with your cc company and bank
Edited by Gixer on Tuesday 18th February 08:41
Thanks for the responses,
She does shred her statements and the more we think of it, it is probably someone she knows as the transactions have been carried out within a 15 mile radius of our address which is why I want to try and see who has done it. The guy in Goldsmiths (where the Rolex purchase was attempted)seemed really helpful so we will probably have a quiet word with him to see if we can view the CCTV as apparently she was in the store for a good while and enjoyed a couple of drinks whilst waiting for the credit checks. Apparently her 1st attempt for credit was with Barclays who refused it then she spoke to a lady at Hitachi and failed security checks.
My Mrs has signed up with the 3rd credit agency (not equifax or experian) as advised by Action Fraud (the police apparently don't deal with it so passed her on to Action Fraud) The most frustrating thing is nobody seems to be trying to stop her doing it, we just have to wait and report each attempt.
It seems ridiculous that she has to pay for a CIFAS marker to be put on her credit file, surely this should be something that is done as a matter of course in fraud cases?
We'll wait to see what today purchase attempts are.
She does shred her statements and the more we think of it, it is probably someone she knows as the transactions have been carried out within a 15 mile radius of our address which is why I want to try and see who has done it. The guy in Goldsmiths (where the Rolex purchase was attempted)seemed really helpful so we will probably have a quiet word with him to see if we can view the CCTV as apparently she was in the store for a good while and enjoyed a couple of drinks whilst waiting for the credit checks. Apparently her 1st attempt for credit was with Barclays who refused it then she spoke to a lady at Hitachi and failed security checks.
My Mrs has signed up with the 3rd credit agency (not equifax or experian) as advised by Action Fraud (the police apparently don't deal with it so passed her on to Action Fraud) The most frustrating thing is nobody seems to be trying to stop her doing it, we just have to wait and report each attempt.
It seems ridiculous that she has to pay for a CIFAS marker to be put on her credit file, surely this should be something that is done as a matter of course in fraud cases?
We'll wait to see what today purchase attempts are.
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