By Andy McCue, 26 April 2006 09:30
NEWS
Fraudsters stole the credit card details of 2,000 MasterCard holders in a major security breach last week.
silicon.com was contacted by one customer of the Clydesdale Bank who was told that her MasterCard details, along with those of 2,000 other people, were "in the hands of a fraudster".
The theft was detected and the card stopped before it could be used by the fraudster.
The Clydesdale Bank would not comment except to say it was advised of the problem by MasterCard.
MasterCard said it took immediate action together with all the banks concerned as soon as the breach was discovered.
A statement issued by MasterCard said: "In order to protect cardholders, MasterCard and its card-issuing banks operate state-of-the-art, multi-level fraud monitoring systems. Together, we look for patterns of activity consistent with fraud. Issuers can then monitor their cardholders' accounts closely for fraudulent activity and may reissue cards or take other actions if they suspect fraud has occurred."
MasterCard refused to say how the breach occurred, whether it was limited to the UK and which issuing banks were affected besides the Clydesdale.
Plus: Read our leader about whether financial services firms should devulge details of security breaches.
Comments
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1. anonymous
Something similar happened to my girlfriend. I'm not sure if it's related, but she uses a MasterCard debit card and, when banking online, found that someone had used her card to buy lingerie over the internet.
She contacted the company and they couldn't give details out of the delivery address (which was not her address). You would think the Police would simply have to contact the website, ask for the details and go round to his house (for it was a 'he', we found out) But no, they insisted on sending her a 'form to fill in', thus delaying any potential investigation by several days.
And they talk about fighting this growing menace?
2. anonymous
My Credit Card company (Morgan Stanley in UK) reissued my Mastercard last weekend for security breach reasons. I wonder if it is the same one?
3. Tim Heaps
My Morgan Stanley Gold credit card was affected too. The first we new when was when transactions that should have gone through were declined. We had to call Morgan Stanley to find out what was going on and were told that Mastercard had told them to block the cards and issue new ones. This happened on Monday 24th.
4. Anon
I suspect this is related to Morgan Stanley contacting me in a hurry on Sunday to say that my Mastercard was being cancelled immediately and replaced with a new one.
They gave few details but implied that fraudsters had got hold of a batch of credit card details - possibly from a breach of computer security. It sounded like it was on a big scale and affected more thasn one bank.
5. anonymous
The same happened to me, Morgan Stanley contacted me on Monday,saying that Master Card had cancelled all cards used on particular company but would not say who!! Suspect the internet ordering system somewhere.
Anyway they have now replaced pin and card