So I get a call late last night. It’s automated, from my bank, and from an 0845 number I’ve never heard of. It’s about possible fraud and I’m a little suspicious.

I go online to check the number. All I find are blazing arguments in threads stating that either this number is my bank’s genuine fraud department, or it’s a massive scam. People claim they’ve called the bank and been treated well; others argue that these people answering are scammers themselves. The end result is a thread where it appears that the number is a fake.

Despite being sceptical, I’m not stupid, and so I phoned my bank this morning (via its standard call centre number), only to discover from their automated read-out of my statement that a British web hosting company that I’ve never dealt with (www.webfusion.co.uk) tried to take a payment for over £2500 yesterday. Clearly, my card is compromised, and although I do often shop online, I’m absurdly careful about doing so. (In fact, of those people I know who’ve ended up in similar situations, almost all of them have been victims of card cloning, not online fraud.)

This all just goes to show that although the internet is great for many things, it’s not particularly wonderful when it comes to accuracy—nor people actually being helpful when it comes to important things like bank fraud, instead choosing to mislead through ignorance or wilful malice.