Same thing happened to my Dad. really weird how it works, though: someone used his card to buy a TV from Argos. How can they possibly know if that's out his normal buying patterns? Most people buy a TV once every 5 years or so, and he hasn't bought one for ages, so he IS due to get one, really. Dunno how they worked it out, but I'm impressed.

And a wee bit frightened....

Probably mentioned before - but I got someone transferring 8 grand in a balance transfer to my card. Phoned up pretending to be me, apparently. Gits.

It's happened to me - a joint card that was only ever used for one thing, and which we'd only had for three weeks, suddenly went on a shopping spree in England and online. The only thing we'd ever used it for was to pay our car insurance over the phone. I won't name the insurer but I strongly suspect that it was an employee of said firm who used the card details.

Happened to my dad, too. Bought a mouse in a computer shop in Irvine and an employee promptly attempted to buy loads of computer gear online with it.

What's really frustrating about these things is that the fraud dept won't tell you *anything*, beyond the fact that you're being defrauded. It'd be helpful if you had some idea of what's going on so you can take preventive action in the future.

The silly thing is that, since the number of the bank was withheld, I spent the entire conversation suspecting it of being a sting and waiting for the guy to try and trick me into giving him my PIN or something. So I am appropriately paranoid about my banking details, but just not at the right time. Whenever that was.