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I had a series of attempted fraudulent payments on my debit card, my bank was very proactive and alerted me, and I have received a new card. However I had a call on the same day my new card arrived from "Anthony Brown", who had a very strong Indian accent, but he was able to recite the first 4 digits on my new card. How would this scammer know them ?

mustaccio
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Gazlad
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2 Answers2

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The first 4 digits of a card number typically just indicate the issuer and are probably the same as your old card and lots of other cards from the same bank.

From Wikipedia:

Payment card numbers are composed of 8 to 19 digits,[1] The leading six or eight digits are the issuer identification number (IIN) sometimes referred to as the bank identification number (BIN)

Ganesh Sittampalam
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The first few digits of a credit card number identify the bank. When the bank gives you a new card it probably begins with the same 4 to 8 digits. So if a scammer knew your old card number, he'll know the first 4 digits or so of you new card number, because it's the same.

Some banks get multiple blocks of numbers so it isn't NECESSARILY the same. But probably. And scammers rely a great deal on "probablies". If they get something wrong and you call them out, at worst they just go on to the next potential victim. Just for example, I once got an email from Bank of America saying my account had been hacked, they had put a security hold on it, and I should log in to this web page to unlock my account. Which all could have been totally plausible except I don't have an account with Bank of America. I presume the web site was run by the scammer, it would ask for my ID and password and then the scammer could access my account and empty it out. I'm guessing the scammer had no reason to think I had an account with BOA. He just picked a big bank and sent out a million emails. If most of those people didn't have BOA accounts, fine, they wouldn't fall for the scam. But if he hit enough people who DID have BOA accounts, some number might fall for it.

Jay
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