A WOMAN was stunned to discover that her store credit card had been fraudulently used to buy more than £2,500 worth of goods.

Joan Embleton, of Newton Hall, Durham, applied for the Sainsbury's Bank visa card as an extra credit card to take on holiday.

She had not used it for months when, on Wednesday, she received a phone call from Sainsbury's asking if she had spent £2,532 on computer software from Canada and a further £54 on an Internet purchase from a firm in Derby.

Sainsbury's cancelled the payments and advised Mrs Embleton to destroy her card. But Mrs Embleton said the incident had made her wary of using credit cards.

"The girl said it happens all the time with banks and credit card companies," she said.

"You read about it but you never think it will happen to you. It's made me very wary.

"I feel like my privacy has been invaded."

While it is unclear how the fraudster obtained Mrs Embleton's pin number, it is thought that he or she may have hacked into Sainsbury's computer system.

Joanne Mallon, credit card brand manager at Sainsbury's Bank, admitted that the incident was not isolated.

"Some card fraudsters have access to very sophisticated methods of finding out card details, and it can be difficult to protect yourself 100 per cent," she said.

"Like all banks, we work with police to try to reduce fraud, and the risk to our customers is also minimised by our very high levels of security and data protection.

"Sadly, it seems that in this particular case, our customer was simply unlucky."