Please be particularly wary about card security whilst you’re abroad, especially in Eastern Europe. Card fraudsters love business travellers and holidaymakers. That’s because they have that bit more time to use the card before it’s blocked. Chip and pin technology is a major problem for fraudsters but there are still risks to watch out for. A report we read recently highlights the problem.

Mr C was on business in Prague when a pickpocket stole his wallet. It was highly inconvenient but not he thought, the end of the world. He thought that the chip and pin technology would protect him. Imagine his horror on returning to the UK, to find that within three days of losing his wallet all his credit and debit cards had been emptied of thousands of pounds. How’s that possible?

Well, it’s a rather common fraud. A trained fraudster had watched and recorded the pin number he used at a cash machine and a pickpocket accomplice had followed him from the dispenser to steal his wallet. Armed with both the credit card and its pin number, the fraudsters had a field day. That’s because Mr C, like 1 in 3 of UK cardholders, uses the identical pin number for all his cards. Naturally, the fraudsters tried the known pin number on all the cards in the wallet. Hey presto – they all worked!

And yes, it also happens in the UK.

So, two points here. Always be very security conscious when you use your pin numbers - not only abroad. Secondly, use different pin numbers for your cards. Work some easy way of remembering them. For example, use the first, second, third and fourth numbers from each of the numeric clusters on the card or some combination from them. Or better still, if you have a better memory than me, memorise a number for each card!

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