Online Fraud, Safe Shopping, Internet Security, Identity Theft

I'm sure your opinion is impartial, right?

Yup, shouldn't have got through but even though he's a known spammer, he'd actually taken a break for a couple of months and that meant that he wasn't detected.

I'll tighten up the spam detection.

"Forbes have reported that MF was giving their customers access to data via a web portal running a vulnerable version of Drupal."

https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/04/mossack-fonseca-breach-vulnerable-slider-revolution

Long story short, my dad got defrauded.
Contacted Auction Fraud, logged report. They can't do anything.
Local police sent me back to AF. I was FFS.
Phoned UK Mail (note that Royal Mail CANNOT by law do this) and they stopped the parcel in time.

SUCCESS!!!

My girlfriend had her passport nicked. Any tips?

Alert her banks, alert the passport authority.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/report-a-lost-or-stolen-passport-form-ls01

You may want to sign up to identity check services to monitor any credit applications. Though I've not needed to use any so I don't know which to recommend.

Some cheeky cunt is applying for loans and the like in my name.. had 3 letters so far this week. Assume identity theft, anyone been in a similar situation? Going to try and track the person down...

Yep - at least 5 times over the last 3 years .
Payslip posted to home (outside post box thing ) never arrived and so numerous credit card/mobile phone applications and once or twice actual use of = bills ... its a pain but contact the banks etc and they will snuff the applications out and report to Action Fraud.
These people will give you obvious advice on how not to leave the stable door open again but there is always something new ...https://www.cifas.org.uk/identity_fraud

Cheers for that. It blows my fucking mind that these websites are so fucking useless and badly designed. Just drilled down to try and find live chat as phone lines are not operational (they hung up) and got this...
"Online advisor - live chat

This service is available 24 hours a day. When using web chat you are speaking live to one of our advisors in the contact centre, who can assist with queries or you help fill out an online report. "

No link, no CTA, no nothing, how is that possible? How do these people have jobs? This is the NATIONAL portal for reporting CYBER crime. If I was in charge of this the people who made that decision would be lined up against a wall and shot. Unforgivable. Should be fucking shot.

Yeah - I was always angry too.
1/ First the little shit strangers trying to steal from me *should be lined up against a wall and shot. Unforgivable. Should be fucking shot.
2/ The advice services are plod .

If you haven't already it's worth getting your credit report (there are a few free options) which will tell you everything that's been applied for.

Cheers buddy, have done that. Some cheeky cunt has taken a loan out from Rate setter. Will sort.

Not sure where to post this.
My debit card has been "retained" by the an ATM whilst abroad on holiday. I have a CC with me and have lifted cash using it so have no issues getting cash. My bank who issued the debit card have suggested that i open a moneygram account and put my debit card details into the momeygram account to 'withdraw' cash locally at the postoffice.
Is this secure/robust etc? Seems like a sh*te service to me from a large and reputable high st bank.
Any advice welcome.

Dredging this thread up. In the last month I’ve had letters from Santander and Lloyd’s confirming that I’ve opened a new account with them - I’ve done nothing of the sort. Mrs Sparky just had one from NatWest.

What’s going on and what steps should I take?

I spoke to Santander and they were as much use as a chocolate teapot, Lloyds weren’t even reachable on the phone.

Letters in the post type letters?

I'd start off by checking your credit report on Noddle or something and ensuring that there aren't any credit cards, loans, etc that have been taken out in your name.

For the banks, I'd go into the branches (together with passport and recent utility bill as proof of who you are) and push them to either resolve it or pass you on to the fraud department. It's a lot harder to fob you off in person.

Do you have a sort code for the accounts? You may be able to find more location info http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/consumers/sort-code-checker

Ohhh update on my case... culminated in a debt collector turning up on my doorstep with a court order for payment on a fine for a criminal conviction attributed to me! Needless to say I’m squeaky clean but had to talk for hours to get the guy to believe is was Andy Dufrain innocent.

On the plus side, I have the address and the phone number of the guy who has been up to no good and even spoke to him on the phone - the cheeky bugger pretended to be me!

Think it’s all sorted now though.

@Dammit - Yep, I got a letter from Santander and one from Lloyds. But only relating to online banking. Customer services told me that the fraudsters had probably been stealing the other letters from my post box. Apparently they can do this quite easily with long tweezers.

@Aggi - Good idea. I've requested a credit check with each of the big three agencies (learning a lot of this from MoneySavingExpert this evening) and they should come through soon. Noodle already has, and it shows me that there could be two more bank accounts with other banks. Goodness knows what the other two credit files will turn up.

What an annoying and unnecessary load of rubbish to have to straighten out...

Incidentally, I tried reporting this to the police and they told me on the phone to report it online. I then went around in circles for ages on the police website before being finally sent to Action Fraud. There wasn't the right option to report it via Action Fraud's website so I called them, but just got a message that said they were busy, and then got cut off. I'm getting a similar run-around from the banks themselves.

This ID theft stuff must be the perfect crime: victims can hardly report it, let alone expect a conviction.

And if the attacker is in West Africa or Russia, absolutely no chance of them being prosecuted for it even if the coppers take it seriously.

I had a situation where it appeared that my mobile number was spoofed (multiple calls from people I hadn't called saying they had a missed call from me).

Attempting to report this to my mobile operator was pretty much impossible. Suggestions included blocking the numbers (even though I didn't know who was calling me), my friends were playing a joke on me and are you sure you're not phoning these people.

You will be wasting your time reporting it to the police or action fraud. I spent about a year and a half trying to get either to act upon information I gave them. I tracked the guy down, got his numbers, spoke to him, and then handed all the evidence to the police who said they can do nothing.
Our whole system is fucked. It’s not even the polices fault, they are instructed to only touch cases better by action Fraud, action Fraud are useless.

Go see the banks. It’ll be some cheeky twat stealing your post. He will live down the road.

I reported to action fraud when some scumbags in England defrauded my dad when he sold them their camera. They don't have time to chase small cases, so by all means report it but don't expect anything from it. But, I reported it anyway because at least they know it is happening then.

The parcel company send the parcel back to him when I phoned them, all credit to them! They said they had more weirdness in the address, maybe that is why the person I spoke to was happy to help.

Bloody long tweezers needed if they are

How can I tell if this website is legit?

http://www.howardsfriedchicken.co.uk/