The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : They pin their hope on written numbers Law & order

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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

They pin their hope on written numbers Law & order

Writing secret PIN numbers on cover of ATM card leads to siphoning off money, reports
L. Srikrishna

Recently, a couple working in a government department in Virudhunagar district lost its ATM cards kept in a wallet. Only the next day the couple realised that the cards were missing. Immediately, they rushed to the police station and lodged a complaint. But, by then, a fraudster had withdrawn Rs. 60,000 from the debit cards. How… ? One may wonder.

Preliminary inquiries revealed that they had written their PIN on the cover of the card, which came in handy to the stranger.”

Narrating the incident to a group of police officers at an interaction programme with bankers, Deputy Inspector General of Police (Madurai Range) S.S. Krishnamoorthy said that ATM cardholders should never write the PIN anywhere on the cover. He wanted the police officers at the station level to take the message to the people using debit cards and help prevent crimes.

During a recent visit, Additional Director General of Police (Law and order) K. Vijay Kumar had stressed that police officers in the districts should interact with bankers about white collar offences and keep abreast of different types of credit/debit card frauds.

With increasing use of plastic money by a majority of people, bankers have been conducting awareness programmes for users and custodians of law on the dos and don’ts.

Four types of frauds

There are primarily four types of frauds: cards either lost or stolen may be misused; the card may be genuine, but the details furnished to obtain it from bank may be fake; international counterfeit cards; and online frauds.

The officers said that in the first category, any person who lost his/her card might end up losing the money.

In the second instance, the fraudster would have furnished bogus names and salary certificates and obtained the card. In the third type, by hacking the data in the credit card, it could be misused. And in the last category, international credit card holders turn out to be the victims.

Most frauds took place when card holders revealed their CVV (card verification value) numbers. This would enable a person to commit a fraud online, the officers said.

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