Around 2.5 million people were bank and credit card fraud in England and Wales the last six months, the Office for National Statistics warned.
Fraud and online Scam has become a growing risk, especially for international students who live abroad first time.
“I suspected that my bank card was theft when I paid my accommodation fee during travelling to Scotland, because one of payment feedbacks showed that the transaction successful in Thailand,” Pui, Bangkok, a student from Cardiff University.
“Finally it found out that it was my friend and she did not mean to steal me. It happened accidentally. I forgot to sign out my bank information when I used her laptop to book hotel, then she forgot to change the bank detail when she booked another one,” she added.
“I do not remember any actually victim reported scam, but we do have a lot of attempted scams. We’ve got lots of reports that students being emailed or phoned in attempt to scam amount of money,” Sean Wright, a staff from International Student Support.
“Emails pretend from Home Office and ask money and phone scams as well. We received report that people phoned up students and tell them to pay some money, otherwise their visa would not be extended.”
“Usually after being emailed or phoned, they (students) let us know and we can confirm and find the nature of scams are, fake email from Home Office related to their visa and we can contact to the office to check whether they are scams.”
Regarding to complaints about online shopping, Sean said, “We may have a case of someone’s credit card being used without their acknowledgement, so they went to police then went to bank to make sure their transaction stopped.”
“We do email students to raise their awareness in case of things going wrong, and IT service also sent out fake scams to try to make sure everyone know how these kind of things happen and they test students to make sure online safety module.”
If online shopping online or scam happened, Sean suggested that students reported to the police, “they also could come to see us and we would help students anyway we could, if it is attempted scam, such as emails they suspected is scam but have not replied yet, they can come to us to verify, we can guide they to deal with it.”
Related information:
Identity Crime Advice – http://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/isf/advice/identity-crime/
Get Safe online – https://www.getsafeonline.org/protecting-yourself/safeguarding-identity/#.UwSUdPmKVWB
Identity Crime Resources – http://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/isf/advice/identity-crime/identity-crime-resources/