TOT: HSBC scam letter

[R. Mark Clayton]

I get these by email all the time, but by mail is much rarer. There was some sort of scam from Spain, where they even sent you an SAE - I think he may just have got a bit confused.

[Davey]

I haven't had that, but I was using my credit card in Mexico for several weeks, paying the hotel bill with it, and the occasional restaurant bill, with no problem. But the second time I went to use it at Office Max, they had to call the mother ship to make sure it was me. Which it was. Weird. What about all the several hundred dollar hotel charges that had gone by beforehand?

[Dave Liquorice]

Yes I've had that from Visa a couple of times. Once triggered by an online purchase froma store for the first time. The stores =A31 "probe" =

transaction came from the US somewhere, then they tried to put through the main transaction from the UK a minute later, which Visa rejected and= blocked the card. I had to use a different card to make the purchase. First I knew about the block was a few days later in the Co-op...

The system has since improved and they have a phone system that calls yo= u and gives a list of transactions only one of which is valid, you have to= pick the valid one. There might also be a list of valid transactions and= you have to picke the bogus one. The fictious ones (not the one that has= triggered the fraud system) are not stupidly so, they will be from place= s you do use the card at. Might take about 10mins to go through but the card is automagically unblocked provided you get the answers right.

[charles]

different vendors have different "floor limits".

[Davey]

But it was the credit card company that issued the 'call home' instruction to the vendor, not the vendor itself.

[Martin Brown]

A probe transaction or a tiny donation to charity followed almost immediately by a larger one will ring fraud alarm bells very loudly.

The worst one is that Barclaycard frequently ask impossible questions even for the rightful owner of the card to answer correctly. The worst ever was for the final installment on a fitted kitchen for delivery to the cardholder address where as proof of ID I was asked in order:

Q: What hotel did you stay at in Chester last November? A: None Q: Name a street that connects to your road? (no street names) A: A19 Q: ... about a dozen more taking best part of an hour. Lucky it was quiet and the merchant patient.

Examining Barclaycard statements later revealed that the mysterious stay at a "Hotel in Chester" which we failed to answer correctly was in fact the works Medieval Banquet at Lumley Castle in County *DURHAM*. (Their address in "Chester le Street" truncated I presume)

To add insult to injury after all the trouble validating this admittedly large transaction three years later owing to a "computer error" the vendor re-ran the transaction again and took a four figure sum off my Barclaycard. It was unwound pretty quickly but very annoying.

It seems that once a transaction is approved it can be rerun any number of times up to six years later even if the original card has expired! (oh and it shows the original transaction date on the statement)

[Mark]

--snip--

Agreed. My last bank had an automated system that calls the customer and asks you to type in personal information into the handset to prove who you are! I pointed out the flaw in this system to them several times but they are completely unable to understand.

Not surprisingly I have closed my account with them.

[Mark]

My debit card was recently blocked. Eventually I found out that, if you sign for a purchase instead of using C&P, then your card is automatically blocked for futher C&P transactions (but not for cash withdrawls)! It was possible to unblock the card but I had to make a special trip to the bank to do it.

[Bob Eager]

That must be very new. The latest two blocks were only 3 and 5 months ago.

[charles]

i'd have a problem with that - my nearest branch is well over 300 miles away.

[Allan]

Not necessarily true. there was a scam around earlier this year, where

*they* called you and asked you to call them back on the published number; then they pretended to hang up but actually they just played you a recording of dial tone. After you had dialled *they* pretended to answer the call and asked for all your details.

Allan

[Allan]

It seems to work OK with IE (8 and 9) for me, but I normally use Chrome. If Chrome updates itself then it usually freezes until after I've updated Rapport - and if the Rapport people haven't yet written their "fix" for the update I have to wait and use IE until they have.

Allan

[Martin Brown]

That is actually very clever social engineering by the scammers and will probably catch out all but the most wary.

[Frank Erskine]

Nick Clegg walked into a branch of HSBC to cash a cheque. As he approached the cashier he said "Good morning , could you please cash this cheque for me"?

Cashier: "It would be my pleasure Sir. Could you please show me your ID?"

Clegg: "Well I didn?t bring my ID with me as I didn't think there was any need to. I am Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister!!!"

Cashier: "I?m sorry, but with all the regulations, monitoring, of the banks because of impostors and forgers, etc. I must insist on proof of identity."

Clegg: "Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am."

Cashier: "I am sorry Deputy Prime Minister but these are the bank rules and I must follow them."

Clegg: "I need this cheque cashed."

Cashier: "Perhaps there?s another way: One day Colin Montgomery came into the bank without ID. To prove he was Colin Montgomery he pulled out his putting iron and made a beautiful shot across the bank into a cup. With that shot we knew him to be Colin Montgomery and cashed his cheque. Another time, Andy Murray came in without ID. He pulled out his tennis racquet and made a fabulous shot where the tennis ball landed in my cup. With that spectacular shot we cashed his cheque..So sir, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you, as the Deputy Prime Minister?"

Clegg stood there thinking and finally says: "Honestly, I can't think of a single thing I'm good at."

Cashier: "Will that be large or small notes, deputy Prime Minister?"

[fred]

I think I'm safe, there's no way the scammers could possibly duplicate the incredibly annoying machine driven interface that my bank employs, if I got to speak to someone within 5mins I'd definitely smell a rat!

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. If you get through in under 20 minutes is not a real bank, its scammers.

Mind you, is there a difference, anymore?

[Mark]

They could simulate a call centre by playing Vivaldi for 15 minutes.

Very little.

[Tim Streater]

Do they check what digits get entered while they are holding the line open? You could always dial someone you know locally, see who answers.

[Dave Liquorice]

Do you know your CC Co's number of the top of your head? I don't, I'd have to go and find it. In the mean time I'd have hung up the phone...

Of course many people would not know the number either but ask the scammer what it is, write it down, get "dial tone" and dial it... In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the scammers give a "direct access" number saying that it will avoid the queues on the main public number.

[dennis]

Its printed on the card.