Welcome to 2014! Some Ghostly Tales and a Resolution for the New Year

Happy New Year to all MWOP readers, whether you are a regular, a follower or just a casual visitor to the blog.  I have just returned to the office after a lovely, relaxing mid-winter break.  There has been plenty of time for mooching around, relaxing, watching the TV, playing music and above all, for reading.  When it comes to reading, I am a big fan of E F Benson, who will be familiar to many of you from the Mapp and Lucia series of novels.  Delve a bit deeper into the E F Benson catalogue, and you will find many other gems, including some cracking ghost stories.  These are my personal favourites: there is NOTHING I like better on a miserable January day than curling up by a roaring log fire in a comfy armchair with a spooky book and a glass of port.  

There is nothing I like better than a good old ghost story

Benson’s books take you to another world where people dressed for dinner, took month-long holidays in Venetian palazzos, and had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of servants to do all the dirty work.  Mind you, all of that was generally  no defence at all from the predations of a determined and vengeful ghost. If you are a fan of M R James, P G Wodehouse or Agatha Christie you will love E F Benson too.   Having long-since read all the Mapp and Lucia books, I quickly devoured the ghost stories, including such classics as The Step, The Horror-Horn and Mrs Amworth.  I was still hungry for more, so I did a quick Kindle search, and stumbled across The Osbornes.  I must admit, I uploaded it because it was a freebie, but I started reading and quickly got pulled in by the sheer quality of the story-telling.  All right, I admit this may SOUND like a bit of a digression from the topic of banking systems and credit cards, but I am getting to the point, honestly I am!

What is of interest to this blog is an incident in The Osbornes concerning a banking fraud.  This book was published in 1910, so we are talking about cheque-book fraud rather than credit card fraud, of course.  Nonetheless it is an interesting and thought-provoking vignette.  As with many cases of fraud, it happened because of the carelessness of the account-holder, in this instance, millionaire Claude Osborne.  He was foolish enough to leave his cheque-book lying around, which was temptation beyond endurance to his aristocratic but broke and morally bankrupt brother-in-law, Lord Austell.  I don’t want to reveal too much and spoil the story for you, but I am happy to report that all is resolved satisfactorily in the end, with both the perpetrator and the victim learning some valuable life lessons.

It was also encouraging to note that, in this case, the bank staff were on the ball and spotted the fraud.  Although the fraudster had taken pains to forge Claude Osborne’s signature accurately, what gave the game away was that the transaction was an unusual one: a cheque payable to ‘cash’ for a whopping £500 was rare in 1910, even for a millionaire.

In 2014, over a hundred years later, credit card security still depends on banking systems which can identify and report unusual or unlikely transactions.   Today everything is automated, but the principle is the same; to look out for anomalies in your spending pattern. This can be irksome: we have all had the annoying experience of trying to pay for something slightly out of the ordinary, like an expensive flight, or spending money whilst travelling, and being interrupted by a security call from the card company.  Card companies are now able to monitor and analyse huge amounts of transaction data.  They look for spending patterns and are able to raise a security alert when a suspected anomaly occurs.  They also take a close interest in fraud ‘hotspots’, and may intervene when a customer attempts to make payments via certain suspect merchants or websites.

There are many high-tech tools available to combat card fraud, but it is still a huge problem for banks, card issuers and their customers.  Just a few short weeks ago, on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, there was a highly-publicised security breach at US bargain store Target.  The Target chain is a retail giant, with almost 1,800 stores in the U.S. and 124 in Canada.  It was reported that up to forty million card holders were at risk of fraud and identity theft following a problem with the in-store card-swipe system.  This was the second largest card hack in US history, and more proof, if any more were needed, that US card providers are lagging way behind the cyber criminals when it comes to understanding and exploiting technology.

The embarrassing truth is that the magnetic stripe card system is now years out of date and no longer fit for purpose. For the Target group, 2014 is likely to be memorable for all the wrong reasons, such as a drop in profits and share price, massive financial losses and multiple customer lawsuits. Is it not high time for the USA to ditch the mag stripe and switch over to Chip&PIN technology?  I can’t think of a better New Year’s resolution.

PS, don’t forget to check out the E F Benson Ghost Story collection.  For those of you who use a Kindle, it can be downloaded FREE from the Amazon Store.

Best wishes to you all, may you have health, happiness and prosperity in 2014.