How did he do that?

How do you know the PIN "wasn't available"? People often write them in disguised form thinking nobody else could possibly work out that, eg, a phonebook entry Alison fax: 0171 234 6689 really means the PIN no of their Halifax card is 6689.

I very much doubt they could have got that much cash out so quickly without the PIN. You can get cash advances over the counter of banks, but they usually want ID, and it'd be very risky. Particularly as, presumably, the victim was female and you say the their was male!

With the PIN it's obviously a piece of piss to get that much from two or three cards.

Well they were insistent that they hadn't got it written anywhere - but I suppose they would say that, wouldn't they. I know I haven't got mine written down.

Somebody suggested a dodgy shop with CC facilities doing the 'customer not present' thing - but I imagine if that's the case they'll be wishing they hadn't soon enough now.

The shop wouldn't have anything to gain because of a charge back.

What, and gave the thief cash?? No shop would be that stupid.

No shop would. A dodgy assistant getting a share of the proceeds might...

You don't need to get that involved. The best tricks don't involve rocket science.

The most obvious one is to nip into a supermarket in which the PIN terminals are none too well hidden from view, queue up behind the victim and watch her as she enters her PIN. Memorise it. Then follow her to her car, and follow the car.

If you're lucky, the PIN to one of her cards will work with them all.

Yep, that's the problem with C&P. PINs are fine in theory (although 4 digits is not exactly a strong code) but when you have to use the SAME damn PIN maybe 10 times a day, in insecure locations, and it's a PIN which can draw kilo-£ from hole in the wall machines, the whole idea becomes stupid.

Now an ATM-disabled chip&pin credit card (anyone drawing cash on a =credit= card is in need of radical re-education anyway), or one with a different PIN for cash =might= make a tiny amount of sense.

At 20:57:48 on 01/04/2009, PCPaul delighted uk.finance by announcing:

So he'd be quitting before cashing-up time, presumably.

I wish they would do this (disable ATM withdrawls). I always ask and always get the answer that it can't be done.

At 10:22:52 on 02/04/2009, Mark delighted uk.finance by announcing:

It most certainly can be done (technically); they just most likely cannot be bothered modifying their CMS to allow the relevant settings to be modified.

It's marketing. The sales guys are keen on the image that your one golden piece of plastic is the key to everything. Of course they could issue three golden bits of plastic, but that dilutes the image somewhat.

And of course they make a nice juicy profit if you're silly enough to withdraw cash with a credit card.

Theo

At 13:45:33 on 02/04/2009, Theo Markettos delighted uk.finance by announcing:

No. It's an additional piece of data to keep track of, with the associated implementation costs. How many cardholders *actually* want to have cash transactions disabled? Is there a sufficient business case for a board to sanction the expenditure?

Surely this works the other way. My view on this issue is that the customer doesn't have to use this feature, so it must be a marketing plus to allow the people who do, to have it!

tim

I agree that on a technical point of view, and that it has implementation and running costs. What I'm saying is that the marketing folks oppose such a move because it dilutes the 'one magic card' image. That's before you start weighing up the costs of implementing such a feature.

The balance comes down to a cost and disbenefit to the bank in marketing and in revenue (from cash withdrawals) against a benefit to the customer and a reduction in fraud. The balance seems to be lying towards the bank and away from the customer.

Theo

PINs are usually used in an insecure location, even before C&P, eg you can't get much more insecure than ATMs on the high street. The problem is people being so obvious when they enter the PIN, it's pretty easy to enter it in such a way as for it to be very hard for someone to see the number, but you get idiots doing obvious single finger number entry with no attempt to stop anyone else seeing what the PIN is.

Absolutely. It is not difficult to disable ATM withdrawls. Most won't do it. One company said they could on additional cards on the account but not the primary!

In message , Andy Pandy writes

So, it is NOT a C & P problem, it's an idiot problem, glad that's sorted. I am not being sarcastic, BTW.

I only use ATM's when absolutely necessary, I normally use the cash-back facility at the supermarket, and hold my wallet over my hand as I do so.

Back to the topic, I have no idea how the money was extracted in the case described because we weren't told what was in the handbag, apart from the cards. I suspect there was a PIN clue in there somewhere, but who would admit that?

I know someone who has their pin number as (for exmaple) the 11th, 3rd, 7th and 1st digits of the card number. The 11, 3, 7, 1 are numbers memorable to them, in that order. So to get a remnder of their pi9n they simply have to look at the card, but it`s not obvious to anyone else unless they know this pattern. Allows them to have a different PIN on each card so shoulder surfing can only get one PIN at most. Seems a fairly reasonable idea if you`ve not got a memory for numbers. I`m lucky in that I very quickly memorise a number, and manage to keep a lot of PIN`s etc in my head at one time, also remembering which account they are associated with. :-)

So you could get an additional card, and leave the primary one locked away at home?