TOP FEAR
You couldn’t make it up. Motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson had £500 nicked out of his bank account just weeks after he used his Sun column to publish details of his bank account saying they would be of no use to anyone. Well they were. A prankster – OK technically a thief – used the details to make a £500 donation to the British Diabetic Association out of Jeremy’s account.
It was all too easy. Using the name and account details Clarkson supplied and his address which, as he told his readers, is easy to find on the electoral roll
, a regular donation of £500 a year was set up using a system known as Paperless Direct Debit. Under that no signed form is required and the first payment is instant. The first Jeremy knew of it was when he spotted the donation on his bank statement.In his piece in the Sun in December he had claimed that it really didn’t matter if HM Revenue & Customs had lost a CD containing the personal details of 25 million people including the bank account details of seven million of them. The only thing crooks could do with that, he said, was to pay money in to their accounts.
Now he has changed his mind. "I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake
." he told Sun readers this week.Good news that Jeremy has finally understood why ID theft is the top fear of many people. The truth is that any piece of information can be used to impersonate us and the more details the crooks have the better they can do it. Just before Christmas Norwich Union was fined £1,260,000 after it gave out account numbers to crooks who impersonated customers using names, addresses and other details obtained from records of directors at Companies House. They then called back armed with those numbers to change the registered address and bank account. Later they called again and told NU to cash in the investments. Seventy four customers lost more than £3 million.
That’s why I shred every piece of waste paper that has any personal details on it – including name and address. That’s why I never click through on emails from people I don’t know (especially those pretending to be a bank). And why, when I go out, I close the front door and lock the windows.
It’s common sense, isn’t it Jeremy?
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