For the second time this year I have had to react quickly to an email from a credit card company informing me that my on line password had been changed. For the second time this was news to me. Contacting the provider I found that some person had used my card number to buy goods from various suppliers worth hundreds of pouinds. Because of my prompt action I am indemnified against any of these costs, but the issuing bank isn’t and fraud of this kind is costing hundreds of millions a year.

As the only use I had made of that card in months was from one major on line supplier, I have suggested to the bank that they inform the Police and get them to investigate the employees of said supplier who might have access to customers’ credit card info.

This is a serious problem affecting a major part of our economy. It is also a symptom of the decline of what a Polish magazine is quoted in the Telegraph as calling ‘an English system based on trust’.  It seems to me, is that our ‘system based on trust’ feels under threat as never before.

The article goes on the advise readers how to manipulate the system and the Law’s delays to live rent free for months, avoid taxes and utility bills and claim benefits to which they aren’t entitled.