Gulf bad news – how to get your credit card details stolen.

We are in the process of looking for a new house to live in and find ourselves pouring over property ads in the paper. It occurred to me that instead of trying to search out the direct from owner ads which would avoid exorbitant real estate agent commissions, that I should let them find me! An ad in the accommodation wanted column was called for. So I sat down and wrote a short ad that I thought would get them banging down the door to me. The number to call is in the front of the paper so I phoned in to place my ad. The Gulfnews classifieds receptionist thanked me for the call, explained the rates and said that I could place the ad online. That was fine but I wanted to place the ad now, could she please take it. No, I needed to put it online and then someone would contact me. But if I put it online why would they need to contact me? Well they would tell me how much it would cost and give me the number to fax or email the payment details to. Hang on, I said – surely I would put the credit card details on the site. No she explained, I had to email them and no I couldn’t give them over the phone then either. Needless to say I was astounded. They expected me to fax or email my credit card details! I might as well post them here on this blog for all the security that involved.

Now over the last month I’ve had two calls from the subscription dept of Gulfnews reminding me to renew my subscription, and how if I did it online I’d go into an extra prize draw…

So I thought I’d test out this online renewal and see what the deal was. I went into their site and armed with my subscription number and credit card, I painless connected to a secure https site and in a few minutes had signed up for another year’s delivery. Okay, so let’s try the classified. I logged back in to their site with my gulfnews log on (they have all my details of course from the subscription) entered the details, dates and content of my ad and pressed enter. Nothing much happens except the screen tells me that their staff will be in contact with me. So far it seems it is going downhill the way the receptionist foretold.

A day or so later, as promised, I got an email to say my ad would be a paid one (as opposed to their free categories), fine, I knew and expected that, and that I should send my credit card details by email or fax to … Stop. I AM NOT GOING TO SEND MY CC DETAILS BY EMAIL! Also I don’t have a fax, its old tech and also not secure. Email is definitely not secure.

The return email tells me not to worry, that their site is secure and all the other people send their details that way, but if I’m worried I should send a fax.

I reply, that the fact that their site may be secure is immaterial because the email that is travelling to them is not. It is passing through an unknown number of nodes to get there. When it arrives, it could also easily be forwarded on to some other people without my knowledge. There is plenty of sniffing software freely available that will look for emails with credit card number strings in them. The bank itself would not cover me for any loss resulting from the misuse of my card if it could be shown that I had sent the details by email. They would claim I was negligent. In addition, even if I did have a fax machine, one wrong number dialled and my details could be anywhere. If I get the correct number it would be sitting in a pile of faxes in some unknown part of some office. No, No, I will not be faxing the number. Not only that, I believe that asking me to send my cc details by email would make Gulfnews complicit in any misuse. They should desist the process immediately. As well as addressing this directly with the classifieds, I also emailed a complaint to the paper as a whole. Why, when they have subscription on a secure website, don’t they have payment for classifieds on the same system. I point out that I am happy to phone the number to a live operator that I have dialled, where I can have a little more trust in the authenticity of the process and can also get some accountability details.

The only option they can offer me is to drive all the way across town to the parking nightmare near the corniche and find their office which is a villa somewhere near a mosque (no, that’s me being sarcastic, its near the Sri Lankan embassy, but it would have been more inspiring if they could give better location details, such as an address). I suggest that they should invoice me, after all I am a registered customer. They ignore this suggestion.

A few days later I receive a reply from the paper to say they will be creating a web payment for classifieds in the future...

The result. I don’t place an ad! :-(