“I woke up to find my identity had been stolen….”
Nicola Mellor, lost close to £12,000 once her bank details were stolen and her identity cloned. Now as the first line of defence, she never leaves the house without a Skimsafe card in her purse.
“Skimsafe is the brand I chose, I’d seen articles in the press* about them and they are also in John Lewis, I felt I could trust them”
The ordeal started when scammers were able to get Nicola’s bank details and then went on to rack up over £12,000 worth of debts in her name.
“As a single mother of one, and a self-employed business woman, this was a huge amount of money!”
Nicola started receiving statements for loans in her name and then went back and checked her accounts and noticed unauthorised spending, in ever growing amounts, over a period of months. Her immediate reaction was to contact the banks and the police. But as Nicola points out,
“I received very little help, they seemed intent in believing I had handed out my details in some sort of phishing scam, phone call or email”.
Nicola is adamant this was not the case. She then started doing her own investigation, where she discovered that details on contactless bank cards can be stolen wirelessly when you are harmlessly walking down your high street or through densely populated shopping malls.
“Amazingly, your banking information can be stolen whilst you’re out in a public area by scammers wirelessly stealing your details from your contactless cards! Apparently, thieves can download an app to do this using a mobile phone!”
It seems the scammers accessed her details through skimming the information from her cards and this is where the whole ordeal started. Nicola now protects herself from this threat by carrying a Skimsafe RFID security card and urges others to consider this as the first step in the process for ensuring your details are not acquired from you. Nicola concludes;
“Contactless cards are not secure and your details can be easily taken”
* Skimsafe has been featured in The Express, The Guardian and The Daily Mail as well as appearing on the BBC
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