06 May 2008
Fraud
A couple of days ago, I came home to find that I had received a call from the security department of my credit card provider. I panicked a bit, of course, but called them straight away. They told me that they had flagged up a couple of transactions as suspicious, and gave me the details of the dodgy items. To my great relief, the transactions had actually been made by me, so there was no problem.
I have no idea why those particular transactions were seen as suspicious, but I'd certainly rather have a few false positives than for them to miss genuinely fraudulent transactions. I was also quite impressed that they phoned me to check. However, the whole experience did feel a little bit like my Mum reading my credit card statement and pointing out items in a slightly disapproving way: "Now, this one here -- did you really need to buy that, it was rather pricey. And this one, what was that for?"
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Unexpectedly large amounts; and a lot of spending in places you don't normally shop in, like living in London and going on a shopping spree in Edinburgh when on holiday. Before I bought my last second-hand car, I rang my card company and told them I expected to buy a used car for about £XY,000 within a few days. I handed my card to the dealer, he fed the machine and offered me a cup of tea while he waited for it to clear - it cleared before he had time to get the cups out - I think he thought I was a millionaire buying a car for the gardener! We then transferred the debt straight to a card company offering 0% interest for 6 months.by Jonathan Briggs @ 06/05/2008 10:13 pm • Permalink
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Seen quite a few tories recently about people going on holiday and finding their cards blocked - the decisions made by algorithms and customer services can't do anything. And they couldn't guarantee it wouldn't happen even if you told them in advanceby birchscrub @ 08/05/2008 10:43 pm • Permalink
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@bsag - I would say I am quite impressed by their "surveillance". I wonder what items could you have bought that they found "dodgy", lol. Yeah I do agree that I'd rather have wrong-calls than having to find out I am billed by something I never purchased. @Milan - Yeah, I'm quite curious, too. Perhaps they also look at the purchase price as "criteria". @Jonathan Briggs - Thanks for the info. @birchscrub - I have a friend who had a holiday in the Philippines and purchased some things using his card. The card company froze his account in fear that his card got stolen. Thanks for the info that they have some algorithm in place.5
Not sure if/how UK laws might differ from US, but assuming they're about the same, the cc company was protecting their hindquarters, not yours. They bear most of the risk for fraudulent transactions.by Dave_A @ 12/05/2008 5:36 pm • Permalink
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Milan: True - I'm sure they're not keen on sharing their algorithms
Jonathan Briggs: Well, that was what surprised me, because it wasn't a particularly huge amount, and it was a place I've bought from many times before.
birchscrub: That would be really annoying if you couldn't easily unblock it.
Dave_A: Sure, but it helps the user at the same time, everyone wins 
by bsag @ 13/05/2008 6:35 pm • Permalink
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For understandable reasons, there doesn't seem to be much public information on the 'heat mapping' software credit card firms use to identify suspicious transactions. It would be quite interesting to know which combinations of factors (geographic, etc) make the best predictors.by Milan @ 06/05/2008 8:50 pm • Permalink