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For some credit card is a boon while for some it’s a bane. You are the latter one if your card has been stolen and/or hacked and misused. Credit card and ATM hacking is not new and it happens world wide. Last month The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) unilaterally suspended its One-Link service with 14 other banks after finding out that a cyber gang had withdrawn millions of rupees from its different branches through automated-teller machines (ATMs) by cracking the PIN codes and hardware security modules.The bank had also sought the help of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to determine how the gang had been misusing a couple of “zero-balance” accounts of two employees of another bank, one of them retired, and getting complete command over the ATM system of the NBP.
Today I came across this letter in daily DAWN (www.dawn.com) written by a woman who’s credit card was mis used. Here is the letter:

CREDIT card hacking is on the increase in our country and preventive action should be taken the sooner the better by the management of the credit cards and the government. I have learnt it the hard way.

My husband is a founder member of the UBL credit card and I am a supplementary card holder, I used it the last time around noon on Jan 30 to buy groceries from a shop in Bahadurabad, Karachi. The next day I got a call from the UBL credit card office asking me if I had used it to make payment to Saffron Filling station in Faisalabad.

I showed my extreme surprise because I had not been to the city for years and the card was not even lost. It was very much with me.

I was told that the card was used three times at the petrol pump on Jan 31 and Feb 1. The first time the bill came to Rs15,136 (one wonders how can fuel of such a big amount can be filled in a vehicle) and the second usage was to the tune of Rs3,500.

On Feb 1, the card was hacked again for filling up fuel worth Rs3,000. I was absolutely shocked. The gentleman who spoke to me from the UBL card office assured me that I would not be billed.

One Mr Naveed who had phoned me asked me to bring the card to the UBL credit card office, and when I went there all he did was to cut the card with a pair of scissors, something I could have done it at home too. He also assured me that I wouldn’t be charged the hacked amount. I was given the complaint number – 1502080423.

But my nightmare came true when I was sent a bill which included the total hacked amount of Rs21,636. Despite several phone calls and three faxes that my husband sent on my behalf there has been no change. I am willing to pay the money for things that I bought that month but certainly not the amount ‘spent’ by the hackers.

The apathy of the management of the credit cards is simply shocking. I am writing this letter out of sheer desperation for I have lost all hopes that justice would be done.