I Don't FLIPPIN Believe It....

[Naga]

You need to phone the company and get them to hold the bill, tell them what's happened. If you do get a bounced DD then the bank will wipe it of due to what's been going on.

Do you shred your bank statements and cut up your cards or do you put them straight in the bin?

My dad got scammed twice, each was a new credit card. One was just a few hundred I think and the other was for around 7K, doesn't think it was two hard to trace seeing as he made only 2 online purchases with one of the new cards.

[di]

Total Poo news Sarah!!!I can't believe they haven't changed how you get phone credit...I know a few people that have suffered from this...all they need is your card number(no pin number) & as so few people register their phones,there's no sure way of checking it's the cardholders phone.Also,as it's usually only smallish amounts that get taken out,unless you check your statements etc,often they go unnoticed for some time!
Hope you get it sorted ASAP and that the bank will waiver any unauthorised OD's.

[TEB]

I have very high security on my PC and it advised me that their website was not secure.

Sorry to burst you bubble but unless you never go online then domestic computers are easy peasy (especially if its Microsoft). If the US Military, Royal Navy, French Armed forces and countless Corporations, Hospitals, Government Agencies can get hacked, virus or Trojan infected, what chance a domestic computer that owners may spend approx £50.00 odd a year for security with often multiple users, weak passwords (if any), no perimeter defense, and even if you never went online then viruses like conficker infect removable drives and will get you that way, viruses these days not only infect your computers they also infect the routers/modems that you use to connect to the Internet.

[Naga]

If your still using Internet Explorer you might wanna use Firefox instead as it's so much more secure and you can add so many cool features to it for free. One on my addons is Web of Trust which helps to keep sites users have rated as having poor content, be it a websites that might not be suitable for minors, scam sites, spamming sites etc.

When you search for something you'll have a round circle next to the search results which either are green (trust worthy) orange (not great but not dangerous) and red (dangerous)

Internet Security | WOT Web of Trust

Example: http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/7826/mywot.jpg

[coreopsis]

Sorry to hear about your troubles.
Like Jacob,I have separate bank account only for online purchases(ebay,paypal etc).The card is registered with the bank system to prevent online fraud-the bank has to authorize the transaction when I use it.My "main" card(wages account) stays away from the computer-no online purchases with it.If I want to buy something online,I have to transfer the money to the other account.
OH card has been compromised a couple of times,and he's not "online buyer".

[Sanjo]

My daughter's best friends has just been done fo £15,000!!! She is in a dreadful state. Even though she now knows that she will not be liable for returning the money the shock is dreadful isn't it.
We have had similar happenings but not for such totals.
We are going to be using our credit card abroad next year and have already paid the deposit. Before we did so we contacted the card company and warned them what would be going through and the dates the card would be used in that country next year. They said they will only authorise the deposit we told them about and that they will make a note of the dates for next year. There isn't a lot more anyone can do to protect themselves is there. We shred with a cross cut shredder all the time and nothing goes in our salvage bag with any addresses on but it doesn't stop the scum baggers cloning your cards does it.

[SarzWix]

I've decided to do a full format of my lappy, although it's been scanned with just about every free spyware/adaware/virus program known to man, I don't trust it now. So, as it doesn't have anything on it that I can't replace, I think a cleansweep would make me feel happier.

[TEB]

I've decided to do a full format of my lappy, although it's been scanned with just about every free spyware/adaware/virus program known to man, I don't trust it now. So, as it doesn't have anything on it that I can't replace, I think a cleansweep would make me feel happier.

Trouble with this method is that you could get infected when you first go online to update Windows/anti virus etc, its a catch 22 situation. You might want to do a "Hijack this" log instead and send it off for free analysis, these guys are usually on the ball and they will tell you if you have anything nasty lurking and how to remove it.

A primer HJT Tutorial - DO NOT POST HIJACKTHIS LOGS - MajorGeeks Support Forums

[SarzWix]

Trouble with this method is that you could get infected when you first go online to update Windows/anti virus etc, its a catch 22 situation. You might want to do a "Hijack this" log instead and send it off for free analysis, these guys are usually on the ball and they will tell you if you have anything nasty lurking and how to remove it.

A primer HJT Tutorial - DO NOT POST HIJACKTHIS LOGS - MajorGeeks Support Forums

Thanks for that
I know it's a risk, but I can load some anti-virus stuff from disc via an external drive. It's a bit complicated really because it's actually a Netbook with no cd/dvd drive, and Windows is preloaded onto a partition of the main drive, which I think could also be infected. So I'm going to have borrow an external disc drive and reload it from disc that way... Could potentially end up with a completely useless Netbook So I'm enlisting the help of a techie friend


As for the other discussion which seems to be springing up... Please stop now, I don't want to delete my own thread!