Easyjet Flights Scam

[buggane]

Found out over Xmas, somebody had tried (and succeeded) to purchase 3 lots of flights from Easyjet using my bank details

 

Was speaking to a friend who is over from Norway and the same had happened to him through his Norwegian bank

 

Anybody else been hit, just wondering if its widespread or just co-incidence

 

Great Xmas pressie

[Albert Tatlock]

Was speaking to a friend who is over from Norway and the same had happened to him through his Norwegian bank

Too much of a coincidence that. Logic dictates that this occured somewhere you have both used your cards either here, or online.

[thebees]

Not me personally but, I do know of 2 people who had their works' purchasing cards cloned and used with easy jet. I think the people doing the fraud must use some kind of procurer software and a number generator, thus hitting a sequence of cards. There was this one time, my old lloyds account had strange transactions and then the bank contacted me, seems the baddies had taken a nominal amount (1p iirc) one day then gone in for the kill with £500 the next day, unlucky ducky like I would ever have £500 in my current account....lol.

 

Easy jet should be held responsible, THEY have the power, unless the people are traveling on fake passports too, in which case...what is the point of passports for the normal people? chip me up and track my every move

[buggane]

Not me personally but, I do know of 2 people who had their works' purchasing cards cloned and used with easy jet. I think the people doing the fraud must use some kind of procurer software and a number generator, thus hitting a sequence of cards. There was this one time, my old lloyds account had strange transactions and then the bank contacted me, seems the baddies had taken a nominal amount (1p iirc) one day then gone in for the kill with £500 the next day, unlucky ducky like I would ever have £500 in my current account....lol.

 

Easy jet should be held responsible, THEY have the power, unless the people are traveling on fake passports too, in which case...what is the point of passports for the normal people? chip me up and track my every move

 

Aye, agree, they had withdrawn £1 on the card before Xmas (to a merchant I'd never given money to before, don't you think that should start alarm bells ringing at the Fraud detection centre ?), then 4 days later booked 3 lots of flights all of which were approved before they contacted me and I got the card stopped, so think you're right probably some sort of random bad luck thing. What I cannae understand is how they expect to profit from it unless they cancel the flights and get a refund to a different bank account or card ?, or, they intended to turn up and get on the plane which seems a bit stupid given the high chance of it being detected ! ?

[Knoxville]

If you look at the policy for refunds, they would only refund to the card holder name that was purchased with.

[pongo]

Yorkshire Evening Post - Dec 2008

[buggane]

If you look at the policy for refunds, they would only refund to the card holder name that was purchased with.

 

Aye, thats pretty much what I expected, so I fail to understand what they gain from doing this, other than costing me over a thousand pound (If I hadn't noticed it) and wasting a lot of peoples time, maybe they are trying to mess up the flight booking system by inundating it with rogue bookings, who knows, some people have too much time on their hands !

[pongo]

I don't understand either but it happened a lot before so there must be some way of making money doing this.

[buggane]

Yorkshire Evening Post - Dec 2008

 

Cheers Pongo, sounds like exactly what happened to me and my friend, just remains to see whether I actually get the money back of my bank, I've filled in claim forms and all that, just have to wait now - my £30 xmas bonus at work won't go far towards paying this off !

[thebees]

Oh noes, once again we are talking about crimes that require detection. It's like the man in the Yorkshire post says though "Why is is acceptable?" - I, for one, think Easy Jet need to be giving the passenger information to the police so the perpetuators can be brought to justice (its part of my wannabee MHK personality talking again).

 

The bank should be able to recall the money from Easyjet, that would seem like the sensible solution. You get your money back and the thief cannot get his flight (or whatever the scam is)

[pongo]

The Yorkshire Post letter writer says that the fraudsters also bought National Express tickets. A friend of mine had a call from the credit card company recently about a fraud attempt which they had picked up. That also involved National Express tickets. I wonder what the thing is with tickets.

 

I get one of those calls (or a letter to call them) fairly regularly. About once a month lately. Just before Xmas Natwest Mastercard issued me a new one because they picked up a fraudulent attempt to test my details by billing me some tiny sum. Natwest Mastercard seem to be good at picking up these transactions. After they call - I normally call them back using the number on my statement just to be certain it was really them.

 

I'm gradually giving up using my debit card and only use it off island for getting cash from the bank. For online purchases I've switched to using a PAYG Mastercard from Virgin to which I can transfer funds if necessary. It's clear that the people taking our details legitimately don't have adequate security themselves.

 

It will annoy the shops and the banks if we all start using cash since handling cash is costly (which is one of the reasons why some supermarkets are so keen on offering 'cash back').

 

BTW - I just remembered a thread I started back in October which concerned supermarkets including Tesco: Fraud Ring Funnels Data From Cards To Pakistan from a while back.

[jimbms]

Considering they ordered on your card wouldnt the easiest thing be to cancel the flight and get the refund as your the card holder, that is assuming that you check your account regular.

[buggane]

Considering they ordered on your card wouldnt the easiest thing be to cancel the flight and get the refund as your the card holder, that is assuming that you check your account regular.

 

They have used my debit card to book the flights but not through my Easyjet account (it states there have been no bookings made), so I've no way of accessing the flights details in order to cancel them (cannot find any way of searching by payment card number). I'm assuming that the bank will deal with this once they have the claims forms. Assume also there would be a charge for cancelling the flights.

 

Would appear that there is definately some sort of flaw in Easyjets booking system for them to be targeted like this, but when all said and done all you need is somebodies card number to book on the internet, you don't need PIN details or ID, I guess this is the whole problem with internet purchases. I've only ever used my card on one computer (which is fully 'protected' supposedly), never use it over the phone, use it shops occassionally but rarely. Hard to know what more you can do to protect it, but like Bees suggested above its probably just a big computer sat somewhere firing random card numbers at the system until one works so I imagine there is nothing you can do, other than to not have a debit card, which in this day and age would make life very difficult

[Frances]

I often wonder how easy it would be for a call centre operator (probably not that well paid) merely to bring up your details on a screen, photo them with a mibile phone then sell details (with all necessary confirmation info) to a criminal network

[bluemonday]

Just been talking to a guy who got stung over xmas.

They took for train tickets first then hit with long haul flights.

Bank is refunding but obviously there seems to be a flurry of fraudulent card use at the mo.

Pays to keep a very close eye on your accounts.