Counting the cost of ID theft

7:23am Thursday 24th January 2008

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LAST week, I went on a post-Christmas trip to Kuala Lumpur where I spent my entire life savings on a five-day shopping splurge.

Well, that's the tale my bank statement told anyway. Unfortunately, I've joined the masses of Brits who have fallen victim to identity theft after having my card cloned and money fleeced from my account.

I was enjoying the quiet and peaceful lull of January with little coursework and revision to do when I received a not-so enjoyable letter from my bank.

They were writing to inform me of their concern over the large amounts of money being withdrawn from my account so I was asked to pop in to confirm my spending habits.

Apart from the occasional over indulgence in the January sales, I knew I was not responsible for any of these large withdrawals, mainly because I tend to treat myself in the likes of Primark and Peacocks and not in Kuala Lumpur.

I'm rarely frivolous with money and when I left college, the idea of being that clichéd student who eats Pot Noodles and baked beans made me think twice about going to university.

But in the end, I decided to take a year out and work in an office to make enough money so I wouldn't have to have a dreaded student loan.

So when I was given my bank statement that showed I was minus £680 in credit, I was obviously devastated.

I had to go through the bank statement saying what I had spent and what I hadn't.

It was a simple task.

The £10 spent occasionally in Primark was obviously mine but the large withdrawals in Kuala Lumpur were evidently not.

I felt pretty smug at how little I had actually spent.

But while I had been scrimping and saving, my card cloning fiend had been having a field day with my hard-earned cash and was not so concerned about making me overdrawn.

From January 10 to 15, they'd clocked up an impressive amount of debt. And although the bank was very reassuring in telling me that I would get every penny back within six weeks, it bothers me that someone could get both my account details and my precious pin so easily.

I'm very aware of the dangers of identity theft and the importance of protecting my personal information.

As a natural hoarder, I file everything, from bank statements and store receipts to birthday cards and gift tags so I knew someone hadn't got my details from delving into my dustbin.

Furthermore, every time I use chip and pin, I adopt the ritual of covering the pad with my hand to make sure that no one gets a look at my pin.

But the bank manager was very blasé about the whole situation, saying the card had most probably been cloned at a petrol station and that this kind of thing happens all the time.

When I told him where I buy my petrol from, he made an expression similar to the one my mum makes which screams "I told you so".

He gave me a long lecture about how "silly" it is to use cards anywhere in public, whether it be in restaurants, shops, bars or cinemas, they're all risky.

According to him, to use your bank card in public will most definitely result in losing your money.

He said my best bet in ensuring this does not happen again is to withdraw money from only "non-dodgy looking cash machines".

So perhaps we can look forward to this information being included on a revised version of the AA map, telling us where to withdraw and where not to.

As the bank representative said, identity theft is something that is happening "all the time".

Recently, members of the popular Facebook site have been warned they're leaving themselves wide open to identity fraudsters and this is a great concern to students.

In our university computer suites, almost every other screen is logged on to Facebook, with students messaging friends or updating information about what they're getting up to now.

What's more, 10,000 people join Facebook a day and users who log on at least once a month has risen to 1.8 million.

All Facebook users are encouraged to include biographical information such as dates of birth, home towns and any schools that they have attended.

But this has meant that popular answers to a lot of banks' security questions are available to any Tom, Dick or Harry.

So now, banks in the UK have had to radically alter how they go about checking people's identity and Barclays has already stopped people from using their mother's maiden names for security questions.

For me, I've well and truly learnt my lesson about identity theft.

Once an avid internet shopper, I've now closed down my Amazon account just in case someone is able to hack into it and I've bought a paper shredder for my sister who was an identity sinner in throwing away her bank statements with banana skins.

So after this experience, it's very much the case of being a new year and a new me. I'm now Sarah Harvey, the clichéd Pot Noodle eating and water drinking student who is in a lot of debt.

• Sarah Harvey is a journalism student at the University of Hertfordshire.