Another case of India link to credit card fraud in UK

[OhioChick]

Source: Economic Times India

14 May 2009, 1446 hrs IST, PTI

LONDON: In yet another case of international bank cards fraud, customers at a petrol pump in the city of Leicester last week found that their card details were used to withdraw money from various places across the world, including India.

The police had confirmed latest cases this week and launched an inquiry after receiving several reports victims whose details had been used to make cash withdrawals across the world.

Several people were contacted by banks over the weekend to be told that withdrawals had been made from their accounts in Australia, Canada, Ghana, India, Thailand, Malaysia and the United States.

The banks said that thousands more may have fallen victim.

Most of the victims used a Shell petrol pump on Uppingham Road in Leicester. A Shell spokesman said the company had launched an investigation into allegations of card fraud.

British security officials have been grappling with card-cloning, by which card details are surreptitiously recorded during transactions at petrol pumps and supermarkets and emailed across the globe for illegal withdrawals from ATM.

Last year, several such cases have come to light when British consumers found that money was withdrawn from their accounts from Mumbai, Chennai and other parts of India, besides other places around the world.



Read more: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Another-case-of-Ind...

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Outsourcing is such a wonderful thing.

[Hugin]

1. K&R

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. This wasn't anything to do with outsourcing

It was fraud, started by a card cloning operation in the UK at a petrol station, and then using many countries, including the United States, as places to get money from the accounts. Or are you saying that this is the problem with outsourcing to the USA?

[nyy1998]

3. Agreed, this article was slanted to make

India look bad.

[OhioChick]

7. Why would "The Economic Times of India" slant this article to make India look bad? n/t

[mule_train]

9. surprisingly, their info is pretty good

because they percieve their audience as Indian only

[mule_train]

4. outsourcing means sensitive data overseas

and you bet that exposes you to more international crime

high payoff/low risk for the criminal

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Outsourcing means giving work to other companies rather than doing it in house

And that didn't happen here. No jobs were involved. Someone in Britain stole credit card info, and sent it to many places round the world.

The info was stolen from British people at a British petrol station.

[ChromeFoundry]

8. Shell outsourses a hell of a lot of work to India

much of their outsourcing is performed offshore in India by Wipro. This includes credit card processing. Is it relevant? Hell yes it is.

The article shows how easily fraud can be initiated in one place and through the wonders of modern technology, sling-shot data around the world, perpetuating the crime at a mesh style attack, eliminating the risk of single point validation and counter active fraud detection mechanisms. It is no surprise that now India now has become a centralized point in international fraud.

The article was not slanted against India. If you bothered to check the source, you would see that it is from an Indian news source, and they were relating the story to their readers.

Oh, and BTW, in the event you have not heard, not too many companies are outsourcing work to the USA. Carry on.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. I never claimed it was 'slanted against India'

I pointed out it has nothing to do with outsourcing. That is still true.

You are imagining that there is a link between credit card information processing and this story; but there isn't. The source of the fraud was one petrol station; individual stations do not make a decision to have their transactions processed somewhere. Clearly, there is something special about this station; it will be the credit card processing machine (commonly known as 'Chip and PIN' in the UK, but I'm not sure if the US calls it that). It's a scam that's been seen before - the machine is broken into, and some electronics inserted to record the PIN that people type in to authorise the transaction, and the other details on the card that are needed to create a clone. The transaction processing after the point of sale, on the other hand, wouldn't include enough information for cloning a card.

If you read the article again (or even just the excerpt), you'll see that the 'centralized point' in this case in the UK - all information stolen there, in one petrol station, and then distributed to other countries, like the US, Canada, Australia - and India, among others.

Actually, there has been a lot of outsourcing from one company to another in the USA, and inside other countries, for years. It's been a standard tactic of management - it allows contracts to be terminated, sub-contractors to be played off against each other as they lower bids for work, and so on, rather than having to deal with (possibly unionised) internal employees who have more rights. It doesn't have to be from one country to another; it's just that in recent years, much of it has been, typically to low-wage countries like India.

[indio55555]

6. Epic fail.

Most of the victims used a Shell petrol pump on Uppingham Road in Leicester....that withdrawals had been made from their accounts in Australia, Canada, Ghana, India, Thailand, Malaysia and the United States.