11 June 2006
Dubai: Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB), which appears to be the latest victim of the ATM scam, on Saturday blocked ATM and credit card transactions in nine East European countries.
An electronic statement has been sent to DIB customers warning them that the bank will stop any transactions on its cards in those countries.
The countries in the list are Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia, Moldavia, Romania, Serbia-Montenegro and Slovenia. The move comes amid similar actions from other banks following the recent fraud.
The skimmers are believed to have moved outside the UAE. Hackers are now trying to siphon out money by using the stolen information through their overseas operations.
A DIB official told Gulf News that holders of both debit and credit cards will temporarily be unable to use their cards in these countries for security reasons.
"Some illegal transactions happened using the DIB cards in most of these places, and we had blocked the access on DIB cards in those countries" said the DIB official.
"We decided to resort to this procedure to protect our customers from any illegal transactions on their accounts."
He said the bank did not specify a time frame to restore normal card transactions again.
"We are very sorry for any inconvenience caused to DIB customers, but we want to ensure that all the accounts are safe."
By Mohammad Ezz Al Deen
Gulf News 2006. All rights reserved.
