What can you do?

If you read my post from the other day called “Way to start Friday” you would have read how our credit cards have been stopped after the Federal Police advised Westpac that our cards had been compromised in some way. Looks like this is the related news story from the Syndey Morning Herald advising that a lot of customers and other banks have been hit as well.

Police warn of new card fraud scam

Credit card and EFTPOS card holders have been targeted in a new ”skimming” fraud scam.

NSW Police have alerted banks and other financial institutions that they have formed Strike Force Wigg to investigate the use of skimming devices, which allow card data to be covertly captured then used to withdraw funds from a victim’s account.

Commonwealth Bank spokesman Steve Batten confirmed financial institutions had been advised of a security issue on Friday but he had not been told if his bank’s customers were affected.

”We will monitor potentially compromised accounts and contact customers to change their PIN,” he said. ”If this is not done in 24 hours, we reduce the amount that can be withdrawn from an account.”

Card users are advised to check account statements regularly and report any suspicious transactions.

Full story can be read here.

You do really hope Australia starts to get up todate with the latest security for cards, we have the chips so lets start using them and get ride of the magnetic strip altogether.

Some nasty little piece of work has just been trying to hack this site. Not sure if it was the same source as last time or not. Just to let you know I have your ip address and the injection code you tried to use.

Luckily the updates and security enhancements have stopped them this time and nothing appears to be a miss.

The attack came from Belarus with the details below.

What can you do?

Getting ready this morning and managed to just miss the bus as it went pass on the otherside of the road. I had to grab the rubbish bin that was laying on its side on the driveway. (Thanks garbos) So I went back inside and finished turning my phone on to find that I had received a SMS last night at around 8.46pm from Westpac advising that my credit card was at risk of fraud.

So on to the phone and internet banking to see if any money was gone as we had this happen to Karla’s VISA card last year and around $1,500 0r so was taken from the card. Luckily nothing was taken out, but I did have to endure the Westpac blurbs for several minutes while waiting for a support person. I don’t really care that your there for me Westpac, you raised interest rates higher than the RBA, so your not my friend, get it.

Turns out that the card has been stopped as Westpac received a list from the Federal Police with our card number listed on it as number that has been compromised so where? So the card or cards have been stopped and new ones issued.

So we need to get 4 new cards as both the MC and AMEX for both Karla and myself need to be replaced. Plus we need to contact everyone who takes payments from these cards within 10 days otherwise we will get hit with fees. Yeah as Sophie would say.

Karla was also trying to get ready to take Jessie and Sophie to daycare, Jessie is in today but Sophie is not, she is also going to have a chat with the centre manager as there is a new person in the babies room whom we new  nothing about and hasn’t made a great impression on us yesterday.

So late to work once more….

It sure does feel like 40+

Well the temperature finally hit the 40′s well sort of. Really glad the Karla and the girls have aircon at home otherwise it would not be bearable for them. Jessie is at daycare so she is ok and Karla is now at Westfields with Sophie doing some shopping.

Temperature at Parramatta at 14:35

Just got out of the car and in to the street to go back to work, after being in a warehouse with Karla and Sophie looking at some new bathroom stuff. The air outside is like a furnance, so I decided to look it up on SMH and to the left is the result. Current temp 32.6c while the feels like temp is 36.3c, it feels a lot hotter than that if you ask me.