[nick w]

hi all......tricky subject to talk about, but anyone got any experience with card skimming over there.............it's getting really bad in rural yuk east anglia now and I'm trying to convince old spouse and co. that serious crime and the undercurrent of violence and racial tension here is rather unsettling and it isn't that bad in NZ - hence the move.........please convince me I'm right....I honestly fear for my kids safety and well being nowadays, what must it be like in big yuk cities?!
nick (when's the next flight to wellington)
:exit

[holland]

hey Nick,

Im not there yet, but I had my card details nicked from a cash point, they were watching me at night putting me pin number in and took £950 out of my account the week before my wedding. AWFUL, the bank were really good though, noticed the amounts of £200 going out per day, and stopped card and after I explained gave me a full reimbursment.

[holland]

here in UK...dont know whether I made that clear!!!

[jubjub]

It does happen, the banks got hit with the cashpoint skimming thing a while back, but they have counteracted that now with extra bits on the machines. We also get the phishing emails and trojans that can give hackers online banking details, even happened to one of the tv presenters, he felt quite sheepish about it.

Unfortunately fraud is everywhere, but it does not seem quite as commonplace here.

[diforsyth]

I read recently that NZ is being targeted more frequently from a global perspective. Criminal gangs have realised that Kiwis are really slack about keeping bank details safe and therefore have a greater success rate in their frauds.

David.

[Juniper]

while traveling in nz i was surprised to see that full credit card numbers are often printed on receipts. it's even worse if your signature is carbon copied on there as well. i started tearing everything up before throwing them out.

[macuser]

We are still in UK and I know half a dozen people that have had their identities stolen in the last 6 months. It seems to be everywhere at the moment.

OH insists we shred everything, even things that only have our name and address on. Apparently even that is enough for some types of fraud.

There's something really satisfying about feeding bills into the shredder .......shame we had to pay them first!:laugh

helen

[DMcG]

The only card fraud I've been subject to was on my Egg credit card in the UK. Someone used it to buy goods in Nottingham about a year after I came to NZ (I can only assume someone trawled through bins and found an old restaurant bill from when I worked in Leicester). Egg were very reluctant to cancel the card - which clocked up another purchase in London. Eventually, after I'd shouted at them enough, they cancelled the card and sent me a new one (after explicitly being told under no-circumstances to send me a replacement). They refunded the money, but "forgot" not to charge me interest on the payments :mad:

Most of the machines in NZ have an extra guard on the slot that stops thieves inserting machines or bits of tape into the slots and in three years I've had no problems anywhere.

Dougie

[barryp]

Initially, I was grateful that NZ doesn't have a national identity number for its residents; you keep a higher level of privacy and are less vulnerable to identity theft from compromise of that one number (keys to the kingdom).

But I've started to notice that authentication here is extraordinarily weak. Typically all you need to provide to get personal information from a company or government agency is a name and birthdate! (Some firms like banks are a bit more cautious, as is the IRD.) If I knew your name and birthdate, it would be a fairly straightforward matter to discover your library records, recent health treatments, and history of encounters with the police. That stuff is just a phone call away.