Identy theft

Just a quick warning I received this morning.

Quote:

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Keep a watch out for people standing near you in the checkout line at
retail stores, restaurants, grocery stores, etc., that have a cell
phone in hand. With the new camera cell phones, they can take a picture
of your credit card, which gives them your name, number, and expiration
date. Identification theft is one of the fastest growing scams today,
and this is just another example of the means that are being used.
So...be aware of your surroundings. Please forward to all you friends
and family.

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I'd say they're getting pretty desperate. All of the images I've ever seen come from those phones are pretty poor. While I'd guess that the images can be cleaned up with today's advanced photo enhancing software (photoshop and etc) it'd probably prove a bit challenging?

Anyone willing to take a snapshot of their credit card with their camera phone an post it here?

make sure that you take it from some distance to simulate an "attacker" snapping a photo of it as you hand it over to the clerk. :D Hmm... I might have some really old cards around here somewhere...

EDIT: Not sure of the source on this, as I got it via email.

OK Phish~

I will play devil's advocate on this one........and please don't get me wrong folks, but I do not intend to be politically correct!

Some of the most financially vulnerable members of society work in restaurants, gas stations, supermarkets?...............some might even have "expensive habits", and need a second job to afford them.................???

So I use the card there and the employee takes the details and passes them to the perp with a hundred others..........no way you can prove anything against them.............the perp gives them a few bucks and the job is done?

This sounds like an urban myth/legend to me.

I call "hoax" on this one.............hell the number of banks I walk past and used ATM slips are littering the streets?....the details are there?

That's my view on it :)

Cheers

Here ya go.,

I gotta disagree with you nihil. I've worked in a bank for a few years and i've seen quite a few variant's of identity thefts. This method is quite feasible and easy to do. Another way of identity theft which is ridiculously vulnerable is signing up for a cell phone. The salesperson will usually take an imprint of your CC and a copy of your license on the application, which he keeps a copy of in the office and one copy goes to the customer as their proof of the contract. If that document gets lost, the person finding it will have all the information needed to steal his/her identity.


Speaking of Identity Theft:

I'm having a huge problem with something. This office I visited is located in the middle of a business district made up of tall building all filled with different types of offices in them. Walking around the halls of one of these buildings I noticed a computer ed. office, and right next to it a mortgage or some sort of lending firm. There 3 huge plastic recycle barrels in front of their door overflowing with papers. My curiosity kicked in and I opened the cover of one of them (offices were closed at the time). I found a few tutorial books and learning materials on MS office programs such as Excel and Word. In the other barrel though...there was thousands of credit applications. I picked one up... and guess what...the application had the following information: Credit score, Social Security Number, ALL credit card numbers and their balances and their limits(including bank accounts and how much money in them), Current Address, Previous Address, Mother's Maiden Name, Customer's Name, + whatever other money they had. If you've never seen a credit report, go to an online one and look at a sample.

I was shocked by the ammount of information leaked from this firm. I sincerely ask your opinion about this. Thousands of folks are being put at unecessary risk.

nihil: Yes, I'm with you on that one. I know ppl that work in those industries... and some of them do have expensive habbits. However, I'm not aware of them stealing credit card info. Most of them are too dumb to even think of what to do with the info. But regardless, thats why I have several accounts. In my "spending account" which I use to go out to eat, or movies, and etc. I leave less than $100 in there and xfer money as I need. I watch it closely because I use it all the time. If I need more than that, then I use cash.

In regards to the ATM slips. There is no account info on the slips around here (US, near philly)... just the transation (how much you take out) and the ballance. They also have the last four digits of the card.... which are useless without the first 12... and expiration date.

But, I do understand what you're saying. My initial reaction to this was "how could they".
But, after you bring up the employees themselves...

Cybr1d: there is absolutely NO reason for that. I too work in a financial institution and we HAVE to have everything securely shredded. I'm not talking about the single strip shreaders... I'm talking about into diamond shapes. Also, the people we get this done by has blowers setup at the bottom of the shreaders. So, everything is all blown around and mixed. He have audits all the time, and the auditors walk around looking for customer info.... if found... we get in some trouble. We have to have everything locked up unless you are working on it at that specific time. Go to the bathroom?, lock it up.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by Cybr1d
Speaking of Identity Theft:

Credit score, Social Security Number, ALL credit card numbers and their balances and their limits(including bank accounts and how much money in them), Current Address, Previous Address, Mother's Maiden Name, Customer's Name, + whatever other money they had.

I was shocked by the ammount of information leaked from this firm. I sincerely ask your opinion about this. Thousands of folks are being put at unecessary risk.

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Contact the authorities, police, credit bureau, better business bureau...whoever. Did you keep any of the documents for evidence, the rest of it has likely hit the trash by now.


Cheers:

LOL,

My habbit is to leave all my credit cards at home, exept one, which I hide inside my wallet to use in case of emergency. The only card i'll use is my Debit Card, which doesnt have much money anyways because i'm broke :D.


Let me add something about the receipts:
When you use your credit card to buy something, it prints out 2 receipts for the cashier. One of them is the one you sign, which indeed includes the whole 16 numbers and your expiration date, and you get a copy one which only includes the last 4 digits...giving folks a fake sense of safety :).
This is pretty much the same for most of the credit card machines...including the ones in gas stations, supermarkets, grocery stores.


DJM, unfortunately i didnt keep any of them. I'm pretty confident that if I go back there again, they'll most likely have more of them thrown out.


EDIT:

phish,

you must have misunderstood me.:), I was refering to seeing victims of variants of identity theft. The bank I worked for also shredded everything and locked all the drawers at night so that the janitor wouldnt touch anything.

Nice one Guys!

This is a very interesting thread as it crosses the borders between physical and electronic security, and gives an insight into what goes on in other countries.

Over here our cards (credit & debit) have seven extra numbers on the back............top left bit of the signing strip? OK the first four are the same as the last four on the front, but the last three are unique, and they ask for those if you want to spend serious money. They would not show up on a mobile phone camera.

My comments regarding staff is that they will be "approached" in a nightclub by their dealer....they are already on the outside so what the hell? sad but true? A dealer is a slimeball who will trade with any other slimeball who is not a direct competitor, and can enhance his income?

I will check out some of those slips, as I never get one, and am not so sure what is on them these days.

I too have a "special card" it has the minimum credit limit............actually it is well below, but I have had an account with that bank branch for many years ;) I use it for online and telephone/mail order things...............they even pay me interest when I overpay it because I have to buy something beyond my limit...............no problems so far.....

I agree with the cross shredding idea, but I can understand the stupidity, as some people believe that once they walk through those glass doors past the guy with a .38 on his hip, they are in a "safe environment" almost "self-social engineering"

There are things I could say but I shall not............Official Secrets are an issue over here at the moment and I have "signed the contract" as they say ("secret squirrels act", I call it :D ), but I have seen things with potentially worse implications.

Cheers

the slips you get from ATM machines in the UK contain different info depending upon what banks machine you visit

for example ::

Nationwide has -
Date & Time
Place machine is located
Card No (first 6 & last 4 digits only)
Record No. (dunno what this is - prolly some internal refrence number for that days withdrawl)
Withdrawl Amount
A/C Balance
Avail Bal

But on another slip (dont kow which bank as doesn't say on it)

Date & Time
ATM machine Ref
Withdrawl Amount
Acct Type
Acct No. (all shown)
Avail Bal
Total Bal


so it all depends which ATM you visit and which bank it belongs to

//thanks to Alison who gets a receipt everytime and keeps them - I never get the damn things//

v_Ln

There was a fairly large bust a while back from a ring of waiters/waitresses that were taking credit card information... this led to a bleed over to some retail folks that were part of the ring too (they were doing a double swipe method). I read about it in an industry rag we get (yes I work in the financial industry) and it was pretty neat. I'll grab the mag in a bit to post details, but I haven't seen any online articles about it yet.

Saddly enough many places here in the US do not care who's CC it is. I've written "CHECK ID" on the back of my card where the signature belongs...hopping that the cashier will catch that. Unfortunately that doesn't happen often. The cards here in the US also have the 3 digit unique number on the back called a C.V.V or a CVC code. Thats often used on large purchases, manual entry of a credit card on a credit card reader, online purchases and so on. If you go to a mall and you purchase some accessories from one of the cards in the middle of the hall...they wont even bother to check the signature.

Since we're on the topic, everyone is welcome to do a credit check to see whats going on in their accounts. I guess this refers to mainly the US residents.

Here's what I pulled of the net:

Contact each of the three major credit bureaus:

Equifax - www.equifax.com
To order your report, call: 800-685-1111 or write:
P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241

To report fraud, call: 800-525-6285 and write:
P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
Hearing impaired call 1-800-255-0056 and ask the operator to call the Auto Disclosure Line at 1-800-685-1111 to request a copy of your report.

Experian - www.experian.com
To order your report, call: 888-EXPERIAN (397-3742) or write:
P.O. Box 2002, Allen TX 75013

To report fraud, call: 888-EXPERIAN (397-3742) and write:
P.O. Box 9530, Allen TX 75013
TDD: 1-800-972-0322

Trans Union - www.transunion.com
To order your report, call: 800-888-4213 or write:
P.O. Box 1000, Chester, PA 19022

To report fraud, call: 800-680-7289 and write:
Fraud Victim Assistance Division, P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92634
TDD: 1-877-553-7803

GO HERE IF YOU BELIEVE YOU"RE A VICTIM OF IDENTITY THEFT:

http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/recovering_idt.html#9

The perp better be snapping that camera as fast as he can because to catch my credit card numbers, he'd have to have a pretty fast shutter. What I'm saying is, in reality, my credit card is not still enough to get a good enough picture from a camera phone. I always keep it moving or cupped in my hand so you can't see anything.

People have gone to desperate measures to come up with these scams. This one seems like more of a what if turned into a bad rumor.

Cuff it and keep it moving or hidden and you're fine. When not in use, back to the wallet swiftly and quickly.

I'll just take this chance to bring back on old pair of tuts written by yours truly. I've been screaming about this stuff for a long long time. Just wait till I show you some of the methods you don't even know about yet. :lildevil:

The third tut is a mess right now but, you can check out the other two here and here .

NUFF SAID!!!