Hi Matty, not entirely true. My wife had £200 taken from her account with the Alliance & Leicester. Their attitude is that as the only way anyone could have done this is with a PIN and the only way anyone could get this is if she gave it to them, or wrote it down and lost it, was careless with it etc. The bank is not at fault therefore bye, bye, £200

Ross, Scotland, UK

i was sure that chip and pin puts responsibility entirely on you. if your card is used you are to blame for not protecting the number. if you go shopping and someone skims your card and uses it to withdraw say a thousand pounds your bank will say thank god its not us whos liable now would you like to change your number?
EVERY time you use your card and you have even a sneaking feeling it is compromised in the next instant PHONE your bank tell them the number needs to be changed because of a security concern, dont assume it will be ok, a months wages is a lot to lose and will cause undue hardship and family distress. i have an internet account every time i have to put my four digit pin in to access it i phone the bank and change it. paranoid yes i am after finding a key logger in my P.C and i do have up to date spyware/virus software installed which i run often as well as scanning real time how it got in i do not know. being safety minded, not pi££ed off is easy if you are cautious.

Lee Jones, leicester, U.K

I intend to contact your editor, but for the moment I will make the following comment.

Some while ago I set up an account with a well known credit reference agency and provided them with an exclusive email address ie THEIR_NAME@MY_DOMAIN.biz.

I only ever received ONE reply from them to this unique address confirming the account set-up..

So they should be the ONLY company having this email address and the likelyhood on this one email being intercepted is extremely small (None of my other numerous emails have been)

Since them I have received many dozens of emails send to this EXCLUSIVE Email address from many different companies trying to sell various items. Many related to finanance !!

The Question is HOW DID THE EMAIL ADRRESS get into general circulation ???

The question remains unanswered.

(I create exclusive emails for many reasons but primarily as a way to track the source of spam)

I have today re-contacted the credit reference agency in the hope of a reply.

paul , newbury, Berkshire

These details show that the government and banks are letting fraud crimes grow rather than combat them simply by making signature and PIN systems reliable and foolproof as proposed on website www.xwave.co.uk



Fake documents has made our signature system unreliable while skimmers and pin-hole cameras etc. have made PIN system unreliable. We have option to make signatures reliable by personalising them with ID stickers and option to use Card Key Code to make PIN system reliable.



Proposed ID KEY system will deter fraud by making signature and PIN systems reliable and so this will eliminate the need for us to protect our personal and PIN details since fraudsters will not get tempted to misuse them.



Proposed ID KEY can be treated as a reliable international ID card because it will personalise signature and PIN number to only the right individuals.

George, London, U.K.

When I noticed fraudulent activity on my credit card last year, I notified my issuer and the police immediately. The activity started after I had ordered theater tickets via telephone using my credit card. I also rang up each supplier used and found that all goods were delivered to the same address in North London. I passed this information on to the police fraud unit and was told they would investigate. Some months later I enquired about the state of the investigations and they said the case had been closed as there was not enough evidence. They did not even check on the address I had provided....

R Neubauer, Rochester,

In times when the banks are all about to implode I suspect many scams will surface like this. now how much do you think the imploding banks can get for your pin and number just before they go under
The people with sense enough to leave England and take the cash with them will weather the coming collapse of the world debt bubble, those too dim to understand the peril will be led to the slaughter. Northern rock isn't the half of it the death of the banking system is upon us world wide. Take your money and leave go to where you can still buy a decent home with fresh air and spend it all or lose it all.

David, mtl, Ca

The backshooting cowards who steal your internet info are not the same sociopaths who would do you physical violence on the street.

capn crunchie, ny, ny

News items like this give the lie to the governments propaganda line, that their proposed ID card system will protect us against identity theft. If there is a centralised data bank containing all our crucial personal ID information (including fingerprints, biometric, and or DNA data) on the entire population, then when this leaks out or is hacked (as it surely will be sooner or later) we are truly stuffed. And this is completely apart from the dangers to our privacy and freedom posed by misuse of the data by the government itself, or rogue elements within it.

J.V.Healy, London,

Great idea to go all cash - just watch street and bank robberies go through the roof...

The onus is also on us to protect our money - how can a bank be responsible for people who keep their details on their computer without AV or other security software?

Bottom line is what can be done by man can also be undone by man.

Steve Mitlon, London, England

In many cases the problem is caused by peoples lack of personal security, regarding their personal data, and a naievity as to how easy it is for others to get hold of it..many of my friends fail to update their PCs with security updates, many dont know what an anti-virus program is or a firewall, many have no idea how dangerous it is to keep personal data in a file on their PC hard drive, many have no idea about phising and the duplicating of web-sites or the fact that search engines such as Google can show search results which include many malicious web sites, complete fakes set up by hackers and fraudsters.... navigators such as Internet Explorer can be a serious security problem if not kept up to date. It is not just for the banks to improve security it is for everyone who has a PC to become much more aware of the dangers and the need for good PC security... many of the hackers turn out to be students some under 18 with simple hacking skills to steal millions of pounds ....easily!!

MPG, Barcelona, Spain

It is really worrying that this level of information, especially PIN's, is available from websites. The way I understand it, credit cards have a chip that cannot be cloned and banks are therefore able to tell if your card had been cloned or the actual card used in a fraud. I know that banks will refuse to pay compensation if they believe an original card has been used, or the PIN number has been obtained due to carelessness of the card holders part. It is difficult to see a workable solution to this problem. In the short term, maybe card holders could opt-out allowing their cards to be used for on-line purchases and banks only permit original cards to used in any transaction. This would not completely solve the problem but it would shut down some of the fraudsters favoured channels, especially over this busy Christmas period.

PWW, Peterborough, UK

Another benfit of outsourcing to India etc.

Phil, London,

Credit reference agency Equifax is part of the probem of the British loss of privacy.
It seems that one is forced to sanction ones details being handed over to the credit reference agencies even if one wants any kind of low cost service such as broadband.

British businesses have lost their balls if they cannot take minor risks of £10 or so without referring to these agencies.

K Urban, London, UK

The Information Commissioner has been sleeping.
He should have ensured that the right systems were in place to prevent this at the start.
The public were forced by yje Banks to use ''Chip and Pin'' with the use of passwords and now they have to bear the consequences.

K Urban, London, UK

One minute the ICO asks for more powers and now he says that he can take action. He did nothing against Nationwide, leaving the FSA to clear up that mess. The DPA 1998 is simply not understood within the UK, leaving a huge potential for breaches that is often realised. It further concerns me that your "expert on Internet fraud" is unware of a trade that has been known within the security industry for over 18 months at the scale that you report!

Des Ward, REIGATE, UK

I have just had £134 taken from my Business account through 7 separate Debit card payments via Paypal.....all of which were absolutely nothing to do with me. OK the money was refunded very quickly but I need to know how my Bank details were made available. I am absolutely positive that my Debit card was not scanned so it must have been cracked via the internet.....or through my details being hacked and sold maybe according to this article. Great is'nt it!!
Perhaps you could tell me how it was done....I dont think that the Bank will!!!

Dave Vooght, Linköping, Sweden

Perhaps the time has come for all of us who can afford it to have two bank accounts, one on-line and one private. The on-line account would be used for transactions but we would not keep any substantial amount of money in it from day to day. The other account would be private and only we and the bank would now the account number.

Frank Upton, Solihull,

1) It seems reasonable to suppose that someone possessing 32 genuine PINs would offer the genuine PINs as a free sample, and then sell 100 fake PINs. They are crooks, after all.

2) Why bother? When one of those random card number generator sites spat out my card number in the late 90's, I discovered the hard way that almost none of the large US card merchant companies even bothered to check that the name given when making a purchase matched the real cardholder's name I bet there are still plenty of merchant companies like that around, if you know where to look.

3) It took me over a month of trying to get the world's largest online book retailer to listen to my warnings that someone was using my email address with someone else's stolen credit cards. In that time they let the crook try four different cards. I don't shop there anymore.

4) When you get spam trying to recruit you as a money launderer – ALWAYS report it to the police.

Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK

Let's not throw the baby out with the bath-water. You can never eliminate risk entirely, so the aim should be to minimise it. We want corporates and state bodies to safeguard our data, so that aspect of the question does require legislation and policing. But at a personal level we can all takes steps to protect ourselves effectively by changing PINs every few months, by choosing PINs and passwords that are not easily guessed, by checking bank and card statements carefully, and by shredding all documents bearing personal information. Yes, it sounds simple - and that's because it is - and surely it's a price worth paying for the huge conveniences that modern technology brings. If you want to go a step further, you can get copies of your credit file for £2 from credit reference bodies. If this is all too much trouble for you (but I really can't think why it should be), you could always try doing what another poster suggests; return to a cash-based existence. I know what I prefer...

andrew, London,

Hi JJ, please note that in nearly every case the bank is liable for your loss through fraud and must compensate. Really it's in the banks interest to make things super safe and they will get even safer as fraud on your account is a loss to them.

matty, berlin, germany

JJ - then the armed blaggers who rob shops, post offices, banks and security vans would have a field day.

Richard Garland, Greater Manchester,

As I see it, it becomes simple. Close all bank accounts, cut up all credit cards and only deal in cash! If enough people took the bull by the horns the financial institutions might take identity theft as seriously as they should. This may be an over simplified solution to a complex problem but lots of times we over complicate simple issues. The onus is on the banks etc to protect our monies they charge us enough for doing so!

JJ, Auckland, NZ