Final Word: Account for yourself

By Paul Moore

We are all creatures of habit. Sometimes these habits can, if we are not careful, turn into full blown obsessions, things we have to do in a certain way, at a certain time in order to allow us to go about our daily business with some kind of equanimity.

I read recently of a woman who is obsessed with the number eight and who maps out her entire day using the number, and multiples of it, to do simple tasks such as supermarket shopping. That has to be beyond exhausting.

Thankfully my habits have not ye reached this level of obsession and are restricted to little things I have to do before sleep.

One of these is to check my banking app each evening before retiring, especially on a working day where I might have used my card in a dozen different places buying coffee or lunch or, on occasion, something a tad more extravagant.

Normally it is merely a matter of adding up the day’s spending and being outraged at the price which a cup of coffee has become.

Last week, however, I was met with a number of payments which did not look in any way familiar.

One was to the DVLA for car tax and two seemed to be payments to a London Borough none of which I was certain I had made.

The immediate reaction to this is to panic given the levels of scamming which are reported each day.

Given the nature of my work I am, I would hope, as clued in as I can be about online scams and never pass on my card details except, crucially as it turns out, when buying online and Paypal or Apple Pay is not available. When the panic subsided I found the emergency number of my bank and called them. During a long but very skilfully handled call by the bank official it was possible to discover that the three payments had been done online from a desktop computer in London using my full card details including CVC security number.

My belief that I had some knowledge of how these things work was undermined somewhat since the card was relatively new and I was sure it had not left my pocket at any time.

The bank official suggested that those responsible had hacked into the site of a merchant I had bought from on a previous occasion. Terrifyingly it was suggested that the payments may have been a sighting lap for a larger incursion the following day. The result was a disabled card, a respect for the way the bank dealt with a late-night problem and, an extremely paranoid card customer.

Of course the real issues start then because one has no way of paying for anything other than cash and many places, especially coffee houses, do not take cash. Also, all one’s apps have to be updated and standing orders paid manually.

I realise this is a small price to pay for having one’s account made safe but it is still deeply frustrating. But it is the paranoia which is the worst outcome.

I have now taken to almost continually checking my account during the day, as have many of my friends, on the mistaken premise that if I can get caught given the work I do, what chance have they of avoiding bank account apocalypse. I fear I am becoming my own version of the number eight woman and can only hope that this will pass as the scam becomes a more distant memory. In the meantime at the risk of making you join us number eight obsessives, make sure you check you bank account every evening.