I can go you one better...

When I was living in London, a few years ago, one friday afternoon I got a phone call from the bank asking if I or my wife, were shopping in the Hammersmith area with the renewed bank card they had just sent. We weren't and had never ever visited that particular area.

It turned out the bank's systems monitor all card transactions and filter out exceptional ones, that get investigated. Very impressive they found out about the abuse immediately when the card started to be used (Friday afternoon/two-ish). They blocked the card immediately and none of the transactions ever showed up on our statements . Very frightening to know that they hold a profile on you that's so accurate.

This was with NatWest, believe it or not.

Exactly the opposite happened with AMEX. Suddenly they started billing for air tickets, cash advances and hotel expenses for pretty expensive trips between London and Moscow. It turned out their travel dept had credit card numbers mixed up. Funny enough, AMEX-cards were unable to stop AMEX-travel doing this. In the end I just gave up the card. They kept sending reminders and ultimately started legal proceedings. Their law firm stopped this once they had a real look at the file. AMEX themselves were utterly hopeless -- they not even apologied .

This proves that abusing card info doesn't require a criminal genius to hack into an e-mail system. Disclosing card information to a --presumably reputable -- travel agency can be just as dangerous . . . .

Henno
mk2 6 nr 6