Credit card fraud

[ribrob]

Heads up that i had two credit card accounts fraudulently opened in my name recently.

The accounts were opened using my home address.

Both banks sent cards and pins through the post separately, but none of the four letters arrived here.

We don't have an outside post box, so they couldn't have been stolen from there, they never came.

So it seems they were intercepted somewhere along the way.

I'm not going to jump to any assumptions where in the postal Royal Mail chain, but somewhere.

I found out via a Money Supermarket's credit report alert thank god.

One of the two banks had spotted the fraud and added a CIFAS tag to my credit report which triggered the alert.

Otherwise I probably still wouldn't know.

I contacted the other bank today to report the fraud to them also, that was the card being used still.

The bank's agents suspect they got my personal details from the Companies House website.

Highly recommend folk set up the Money Supermarket service (or similar), it's free (not sure they're all free!).

This has prevented this getting completely out of hand.

Just letting folk know - be careful!

[tedfudge]

Thank you for the warning

[Lynne]

We had two unasked for cards last week. One a Debenhams account, another a credit company. Took hours on the phone to sort it out and block them. Presumably someone hoped we'd use them and they could then join in

[ontheedge]

Funny I had 2 new unrequested credit cards in the post, have accounts with both banks!!

[ribrob]

Sounds like there's a lot of it about locally then.

This is the service I was already signed up to that alerted me...

https://www.moneysupermarket.com/credit-monitor-web/

...it's free so worth signing up for.

It's updated once a month with general info, but if there's anything awry (like fraud detected) they'll alert you as soon as your credit file has it.

It's worth checking the general info perioducally just to see if there's been any odd credit checks you don't recognise, as banks don't always detect the fraud on their own.

In my case one did, one did not - I alerted them to it.

If you do see something you don't expect, then this site will give you much more follow-up info...

https://www.checkmyfile.com/

...but it's paid (with one free month) but will help you get a clearer picture of what's gone wrong and who you need to get in contact with to sort it out.

Rob