Check your February credit card statements carefully. A Bank of Bermuda representative has confirmed that credit cards accounts issued by the Island's main banks have been affected by last month's computer hacker scandal.

The hacker broke into a company which processes credit card transactions for merchants. The Bank of Bermuda said that the processor has a number of clients who are online retailers, they accumulate a database of online transactions and the hacker managed to break into that data base back in February.

As many as five million credit card customers may have been affected.

MasterCard International said that information was stolen from more than 2.2 million MasterCards and Visa said that approximately 3.4 million Visa USA cardholder accounts had been affected.

Locally, a Bank of Butterfield credit card holder revealed that his statement included a charge of $1,686 to a Catholic Book printing firm in Minnesota.

"Clearly not a charge I would make," he said. When he called the firm, he was told that it had received an order from a priest in Nigeria using his credit card number. The firm realised it was fraudulent and the matter is under investigation in the US.

The customer contacted the Bank of Butterfield who confirmed that some of its customers had been affected.

Steven Davidson, of Bermuda's telecommunication encryption experts QuoVadis, said: "This is not the Bank of Butterfield's fault. The point of attack would have been the processor."

He said that credit card fraud had risen dramatically with the advent of online credit card transactions. In an attempt to cut down on this increasing problem, Visa was now offering a new system "Verified by Visa" which uses a password linked to credit cards.