Monday, December 08, 2003

Petty thieves on the lookout for your pincode !

Two weeks ago, an alert bank customer had trouble in using the ATM. Then, a stranger behind her suggested to re-enter the pincode. This made the woman suspicious and she looked a little better. Now, it turned out that there was plastic envelope, hidden in the machine, with her debit-card in it. She turned around to find the English speaking well-dressed man, but he was nowhere to be found. The news made it to newspaper De Limburger and police warned to be very careful.



In the same period, also somewhere in the South of the Netherlands, a shop owner tried to get his piece of the debit-card-fraud-cake. He copies his customers' debit-card and overlopoked them entering the pin. The net result was 10.000 euro and an arrrest (this weekend) by the policy.



The main lesson: be very careful with your pincode, especially in this shopping season. A union of German banks therefore warns customers (see this press release) to take care during their shopping spree.