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Give out personal information on phone at your own risk

By Liang Qiwen (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-31 14:27

GUANGZHOU: Qin Tian, a local resident, was warned that scammers could fraudulently swipe money off his credit card, and they did not need his card to pull off the stunt.

But the warning came only after Qin had lost 6,000 yuan ($882) on his Bank of China credit card.

At first, Qin suspected that the details of his credit card were stolen from the bank. But then, reality struck.

He had recently given out his personal information on the phone to a caller from the bank. Only, the caller wasn't really a bank employee, but a conman.

A recent report in Guangzhou Daily said the local public security department had, of late, received dozens of similar complaints from unassuming victims of credit card fraud, which has duped local citizens of "hundreds of thousands of yuan".

In most cases, victims said they received phone calls from people who claimed to be customer service officials of their respective banks, asking for their credit card information for "internal review".

The cheats then call the bank back on the phone, saying they have lost their credit cards - they give out the information acquired from the original owner - and ask for the bank to issue a new card, officials of the Guangzhou public security bureau said.

There have been numerous cases where the banks, unaware of the fraud, have issued new credit cards to scammers, officials said, adding the victims only find out they have been cheated when they receive their whopping credit statement.

"Customers have the option to set up their own passwords when they apply for a credit card. But if they do not use that option to make their cards password protected, chances are they will be duped sooner or later," a customer service official of the Bank of China, Guangdong Branch, surnamed Lu told China Daily yesterday.

She said though most stores require customers to submit their signatures whenever they make a credit card purchase, "it is almost impossible to make out a cheat from the real owner since most people don't sign behind their cards, which they're supposed to".

She added: "Signatures aren't required or asked for only when people use credit cards to make purchases online."

Ctrip.com, an online tourism service agency, said they only require customers to provide their credit card numbers, card verification codes (CVC), its validity, and their ID numbers, to buy air tickets.

Scammers have several tricks up their sleeves, such as using fake IDs to apply for credit cards and fake seals to get "no limit" business-used credit cards, the public security department said.

Even though the police are trying to crack down on the crime, scammers are a step ahead. "They keep coming out with more innovative tricks to dupe the public," officials said.