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This morning my husband had three letters from Halifax Bank. One welcoming him to Online Banking, one confirming the details of a Planned Overdraft of £750 and the other containing a Visa Debit card in his name.

As he has never banked with the Halifax and never intends to he rang up the 0845 number to ask what it was all about. Half an hour later, he's still hanging on the phone, having been passed from department to department and ending up talking to the Fraud Department.

It appears that he's not the only person to be targeted and this new account and card had been cancelled before he even called them.

But how could the fraudsters have got anywhere with this, unless they had access to our mail when it arrives via the Post Office?

Makes you think .....

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Lizzie: had similar thing here when changed phone companies. Bogus call concerning new phone line/ bank details etc... So it was someone in the company we had just left or the phone company we had just joined - no one else knew!! We don't know who people are in respectable companies THEY could be in debt or have a drug problem or have mortgage arrears and every now and then pass on our info to certain parties.

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We have no real understanding of how I data gets spread around.

Within 10 minutes of my first sign-up with Paypal, I had emails asking me to log-on to the provided link and confirm my details, which I did ( This was 10 years ago, before I knew better).. anyway I sort of clicked and realised that it might be a fake link. It was and I had to cancel all my card details and the Paypal account.

Whenever I sign up to ANY site, there is ALWAYS a fake email, within minutes, asking me to click on link and re-enter my details.

The most recent was just a week ago. I had a fake e-mail from EDF, with a genuine offer, but linked to a fake site. It was very convincing, but I contacted EDF in France and they confirmed it was a phishing email and a fake site, trying to get personal data.

Don't click on Links. Type in the correct url, yourself. Don't enter sensitive details unless the URL start swith "HTTPS"

In the meantime it remains a mystery as to how these crooks can know that we have joined a site, or made a purchase within minutes of us doing so.

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Unless you run an anti tracking program on your computer you just don't realise who and what is tracking your keyboard actions !

I was recommended a program called Ghostery, (there's probably many more) it runs silently in the background but as a page loads it gives you a small list of who and what is tracking that action.

You then have the option to stop any tracker dead in it's tracks :-))

Google and Facebook have heaps of these trackers constantly mining your browsing history, and both sell your info for their gain to marketing companies.

These trackers are not to be confused with malicious content, they just follow where you go on the net and report back to base so they can compile a profile of your actions for marketing or whatever purposes.

Even logging on here to Nottstalgia gives a list of trackers ! no matter what you look for or do on a computer, some one somewhere wants to know.

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Guarantee that whenever I have anything to do with Paypal within hours I will get a whole swag of spam emails. With many stating my account has been "locked" pending submission of all my account details via a link in the email. Which I NEVER do. I can only suspect that between my machine and the Paypal servers, someone is intercepting their non-encrypted traffic.

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Alisoncc

That would be a worry !

I'd be taking it up with Paypal asap, I've never had any issues with PP in probably 10 years use. Have had the odd scam email when I'm selling something on Gumtree or whatever, but my PP account has always been fine with no silly followups as you explain.

Maybe close that account and re register another one with new passwords etc.

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Guarantee that whenever I have anything to do with Paypal within hours I will get a whole swag of spam emails. With many stating my account has been "locked" pending submission of all my account details via a link in the email. Which I NEVER do. I can only suspect that between my machine and the Paypal servers, someone is intercepting their non-encrypted traffic.

On the few occasions I've used Paypal that's happened to me, which is why I try to avoid using it.

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Alisoncc

That would be a worry !

I'd be taking it up with Paypal asap, I've never had any issues with PP in probably 10 years use. Have had the odd scam email when I'm selling something on Gumtree or whatever, but my PP account has always been fine with no silly followups as you explain.

Maybe close that account and re register another one with new passwords etc.

It will make no difference banjo. This prroblem is deeply rooted and pandemic.

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#9

No Michael Trackers are just that, they track your every page you visit to ascertain your browsing, they are not key loggers, which can steal your passwords or bank details.

You don't realise they are there till you run a program like Ghostery. This then gives you the option to stop them tracking your activity.

Their main objective is to build a picture of you computer activity, not personal details, which would be illegal. Your computer has an IP address which it leaves at every site as a record of your visit, these trackers harvest this info to tailor adds etc. to your browsing history.

That's how it was explained to me, do a Google on web trackers and you will be shocked.

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Yes, it's called 'contextual advertising' and it's one of the most irritating things on the internet.

I really don't know how they've been allowed to get away with it.

It's one of the most intrusive and invasive abuses of your privacy.

Basically, your browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox) generates a 'cookie' (which is a little text file) when you go to a website.

This just takes note of your settings i.e. what language you are using and possibly your login.

Stored on your computer it means that next time you got to that website it will know what settings you use and will log you in automatically.

Unfortunately, the unscrupulous bastards now access these cookies and look at what websites you've been to and what items you've been looking at. Then they turn this information into related adverts that pop up on Facebook, Twitter, forums - all over the place.

It is immensely creepy to see something that you've just been looking at suddenly being advertised in front of you on some other site. Like you can't now get away from them.

In other words, your reward for going to someone's website is to then be bombarded with adverts for their products wherever you go.

You have to delete the cookies to stop the damn things driving you mad.

I notice that someone has recently decided to take Google to court over this. Apparently, Safari (the browser that Mac's use) has a setting to stop access to cookies - but Google got round it. (They can't have people stopping their advertising revenue !!)

I hope the courts get it stopped. I hate it.

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As an aside here, is there any apps (talking OS8 for an Ipad Air) that can kill adds before they drive me mad ! Don't mind paying a small fee if it works ?

I have an Ipad Air but rarely use it as I just hate loading adds all the time, I have gone into settings and supposedly stopped it there but I still get inundated with the blessed things when surfing the net.

On my win7 laptop I have, as said previously Firefox Adblocker and for my rare Facebook use, I have FB Purity which kills the buggers there.

But the Ipad is so much easier to carry around full time than a laptop.

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So, going back to my post # 1, this morning in the post I have received all that same correspondence from TSB. Made a call to the bank and they have passed the information to their fraud department who will call me in the next few days. The person I spoke to advised me to get onto Experian to check our credit score as it seems we are being targeted. I still don't fathom out how anyone can benefit from all this when the cards have arrived in OUR door. Got a PIN today too, for the card I shredded yesterday that had been sent to my husband from the Halifax.

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You can use proxy servers to create some anonimity, and when searching for things you can use ixquick, a search engine that doesn't log your IP address.

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A few years back we found a charge on our credit card bill which was for something billed in Los Angeles! Niether of us has been to Los Angeles, so disputed the charge with the credit company.

After filing a fraud statement, they accepted it wasn't us and reversed the charges.

Our credit card company was in the habit of mailing us blank checks to draw on our credit card account, we had repeatedly requested they stop this practice as we will not draw cash on our credit card due to the high charges involved. We suspected a set of those checks mailed to us ended up in someone elses mail, and this was how our credit card had been billed by a third party.

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I used to get those too.

Ridiculous.

Blank cheques AND all your details. How stupid is that? Asking for trouble.

I eventually got them stopped, but I was angry that I never asked for a loan in the first place.

That's how desperate they are to get us to borrow because now we live in cautious times.

Another thing that really annoys me is this 'tap n pay' that banks and CC companies have now adopted for all their cards.

It is simply to promote casual use.

People might go into Starbucks or the like for a cup of coffee and then be shocked by the time they reached the checkout that it had reached about £7 - because as well as the double latte with cinnamon, they've also chosen a panino and a fancy cake.

So to get round the 'till-shock', just tap n pay. Easy - right ?

Like Direct Debit, it's designed mainly to stop you noticing your bank account being drained.

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With a name like yours I would have thought banks would have kept well away. Barclays have never done anything else BUT con me! :laugh:

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We keep an almost zero bank account, so no direct debit for us, we pay any bills with cash, and the CC is paid off promptly at the end of each month.

There are charges now on savings accounts this side of the pond!! Another reason not to have a savings account with a bank! Banks earn huge interest on investments the average person on the street has no access to, they invest the clients savings account, get their huge monthly interest payments and what do they do to the clients?? Double bend over! pay about 1% interest and then charge them for using the clients money...No wonder we call them Banksters.

As a senior, we get a free checking account and no minimum balance charges.

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Re:

With a name like yours I would have thought banks would have kept well away. Barclays have never done anything else BUT con me!

Yes Malcolm.

The origin of my nickname was from a dispute I had with aforesaid bank and I used that as the login.

It's just kinda stuck.

Not the bank I'm with now !

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Not all bank accounts are bad.

We have three Santander 123 ccounts, which costs £24 per year but earn 1% and 2% up to £3K and then earn 3% on balances between £3K and £20K. On top of that we earn between 1% and 3% on purchases on the card including petrol, food and clothes at a huge range of outlets (which is auto paid off each month, so no charges). Then we also get preferential rates on ISA's. All we have to do is put £500 per month in each account and have three direct debits, which also attract an earning. We use our RBS account to "pass round" the £500 per month. I thinks it must be the best current account around; especially if you have the capital to invest the maximum of £20K in three accounts between you. I have NEVER paid for a bank account for either personal or my business use and never will. The banks make enough out of us as can be seen by how the 123 account pays out ! I also manage all banking on-line now, so I can see, very quickly, if anything is amiss. It took years to pick up the courage to bank on-line, but it is second nature, now.

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