Security News > 2020 > September > My stolen credit card details were used 4,500 miles away. I tried to find out how it happened
Just in case I chose to phone the bank instead. They confirmed that yes, someone had attempted to use my card details over 4,500 miles away from London - but the attempted payment was blocked as suspicious so no money was stolen.
"It's entirely possible that you've used your card at an ATM and there's been a skimmer that's read your card and someone has figured out how to clone your card and sold it online. That's entirely feasible - your card might not have been involved in a breach at all, but a skim," says Leigh-Anne Galloway, head of commercial security research at Cyber R&D Lab.
That's why selling stolen card details online is the lower risk choice for crooks with large numbers of credit card details to sell.
I'm certainly not the only person I know whose had their bank information or other personal details stolen over the years and I won't be the last; a lot of people have fallen victim to similar fraud and even many of the security researchers I spoke to when trying to find out what happened to my card details have fallen foul of cyber criminals at one point or another.
I'm unlikely to ever find out how exactly my card details got stolen, how they ended up in South America and who was attempting to use them.