Just had my CC details stolen

[Alan]

I was checking the CC transactions this morning on line, as I do most days,
and I noticed 5 charges from Amazon for $9.57 plus one for $10.47 over the last couple of days

I asked DW if she had charged anything and she said no. The charges all had a reference ID so we called Amazon who eventually put us through to a guy in the fraud department, as those charges were on neither of our Amazon accounts.

The fraud guy asked if I knew anyone called H**** and I said no. He said that maybe it was a typo on the CC number as the person had had an account with them for some time. Then he said, oh,oh, the only charges on this account are the ones you are reporting now, so I've frozen the Amazon account and you need to contact the CC company and cancel the card.

We've been on the road for 6 weeks now, so plenty of opportunity for the card details to have been stolen in cafe's, hotels etc. Smart of the thief to create an Amazon A/C some weeks ahead of time, and with the figures being so exact I'm guessing they were buying music or something that does not need a shipping address. Penfed scanning tools would not detect a problem as we do buy from Amazon regularly. (last time the card details were stolen it was Penfed who spotted it and called me the very day someone tried to make a purchase over the internet for ~$300)

We carry a couple of backups, and the Penfed card is not the one where all the automated bills get paid so no hassle on that score. (unlike last time).

 

[Texas Proud]

Sorry to hear about the stolen info....

It is a sad part of our society.... and it happens a lot... at least they have made it easy to report and get you another card.

 

[haha]

Sorry this happened to you Alan, but you were very quick to catch it.

Ha

 

[Sarah in SC]

Dang, that sucks! And while on the road, no less. I got a call from Penfed a month or so ago asking if we ordered a $2700 Bugaboo baby stroller. Considering this call came during happy hour at the marina bar, you can imagine how hilarious I found it to be (we have no kids, nor dogs fancy enough to rate such a purchase). They cancelled and reissued with no drama.

I can pitch for Mint.com and their mobile apps as being a great way to catch this kind of thing right away, since you see each day's downloaded transaction history whenever you check it. It is probably more secure than Alan's waitress carrying his card back to the kitchen to run it, sadly.

Hope it is a smooth process to get it all taken care of, Alan.

 

[Midpack]

Sorry to hear about the stolen info... It is a sad part of our society.... and it happens a lot... at least they have made it easy to report and get you another card.

Sorry this happened to you Alan, but you were very quick to catch it.

Dang, that sucks! And while on the road, no less. Hope it is a smooth process to get it all taken care of.

+1. Glad you were able to catch it so quickly!

 

[DangerMouse]

I think fraud on credit cards is becoming more prevalent.

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from Wells Fargo querying whether I had made some charges. My answer was no, I had not actually used the card for 2 years and had it in my possession so not sure how someone got the numbers. The thief had first put a charge for a small amount thru Peopleseekers then they tried to charge something at ATT. Probably due to the inactivity on our account WF were immediately suspicious.

I think this is probably the 3rd card of ours that has been compromised over the past couple of years. However, seems like most banks have pretty strong fraud detection units in action.

 

[BigNick]

I'm in the process of recovering from $5,000 of fraud on my CC. $3,000 billed in April is already reimbursed, and my bank seems efficient, so I expect the $2,000 from the May period to be paid back too. One of the purchases was a low-cost airline ticket which means that the passenger willl have to have registered their ID online; hopefully law enforcement will do something (ha).

 

[Alan]

Thanks for the thoughts folks, I know that this is happening to many of us.

BigNick, It seems like you are on track to get your money back. At least I am only claiming back ~$60 which is nothing compared to what you are going through.

While talking about this with DW this afternoon, what I don't understand is why this particular fraud goes undetected. The person who had my card details opened an Amazon account and put in my card details. They cannot have known my home address, which is required when registering a card on the site, and surely their computer systems can see that the card is already registered to another customer and could have contacted me to let me know and check that I knew this person. It is aggravation for me, but lost money for Amazon as Penfed will not be paying the charges.

 

[BigNick]

FWIW, I am seriously considering writing down, then scratching out the CVC code ("last three digits on the back") of my new card. I only ever use it online, but it is needlessly exposed to <anyone> each time I use it in a store.

 

[easysurfer]

Thanks for the thoughts folks, I know that this is happening to many of us.

BigNick, It seems like you are on track to get your money back. At least I am only claiming back ~$60 which is nothing compared to what you are going through.

While talking about this with DW this afternoon, what I don't understand is why this particular fraud goes undetected. The person who had my card details opened an Amazon account and put in my card details. They cannot have known my home address, which is required when registering a card on the site, and surely their computer systems can see that the card is already registered to another customer and could have contacted me to let me know and check that I knew this person. It is aggravation for me, but lost money for Amazon as Penfed will not be paying the charges.

I feel for you. I remember when my Discover Card got compromised about a year ago. I had a call at about 8 in the morning from Discover fraud prevention asking if I had a charge of about $1.00 to Sony. I said, "heck no, I was still in bed at the time."

About obtaining your address...perhaps the person who had your card then got your address online on one of those criminal background check sites (such as Intellius). Alot of info on a person can be had, especially for a price.

 

[Alan]

About obtaining your address...perhaps the person who had your card then got your address online on one of those criminal background check sites (such as Intellius). Alot of info on a person can be had, especially for a price.

Good thinking, I'm sure my address is easily available to those who wish to find it. In fact I just googled my name and in White Pages my name and address came up.

 

[Mulligan]

Allan, the only time I ever had CC fraud was when I came back from a vacation. Even then I only used it for a hotel and incidentals at that place. That was the only time I used that card in a year. About 500 bucks in purchases in another state different from where I went and lived.I didn't even know anything about it and the CC company called me to see if I had been in Texas. I said no and they took it off.

 

[Boose]

DH and I experienced a similar thing recently. It seemed to me that the illicit user was making small charges to see if the card number worked before she went to town at Nordstrom. That store should have been a *very* big flag to our cc company!

 

[martyp]

I had the same thing happen on my card last month. Well Fargo caught it and called me. It took a week to get a new card. WF charges a fee to get it to me earlier but I thought I could wait. The biggest problem is remembering which utilities are using my CC for monthly automatic payments. Found another one just today.

 

[ShortInSeattle]

A tip for you all: if you put recurring charges on a credit card, get a CC for that purpose only and never use it anywhere else. We did that after having to go through the song and dance of moving all our accounts over after a fraud. The second time our card was compromised, we didn't have to do anything but wait for a replacement.

I'm always amused when someone steals a card then has things shipped to their home. Our thief bought an airline ticket in their own name. Idiots.

SIS

 

[MBAustin]

Very aggravating. We've just come through a very annoying spell where someone signed us up for Experian credit protection services at $14.95/month. We had the charges reversed by our CC (credit union) provider but declined to have our account closed as we have a LOT of automatic payments so that would be a big PITA**. Then the charge showed up again. I called the number in the CC transaction log and after a few minutes of discussion, they agreed to reverse the charges and block the account. So far, so good. But annoying.

 

[Idnar7]

This winter shortly before Christmas there was a group of cars driving around and removing mail from mailboxes that had the flag up. They would hit shortly after people had headed off to work. They would put the flag down so it looked as if the postman had picked up the mail. My wife happened to be looking out the window just as they hit ours. We had just put together our annual contributions so they had our credit card numbers and cvc. Called and cancelled the card, but had many recurring charges, so was a pita to get them all switched. They caught them when they were dumb enough to take mail in front of a waiting school bus driver who wrote down their license number.

 

[utrecht]

I'm in the process of recovering from $5,000 of fraud on my CC. $3,000 billed in April is already reimbursed, and my bank seems efficient, so I expect the $2,000 from the May period to be paid back too. One of the purchases was a low-cost airline ticket which means that the passenger willl have to have registered their ID online; hopefully law enforcement will do something (ha).

Why do you need to get the money reimbursed? Why did you pay the bill in the first place?

 

[grasshopper]

I use a virtual CC number from Discover or ATT Universal card. By using a virtual number only the payer that first uses it, can use it for recurring charges. Works great for everyone for online purchases, except Amazon, as each vendor bills separately. So even if my CC card number changes, the virtual number that Netflix or the electric company stays the same.

 

[spncity]

I have a notification or alert setting on my credit card that emails me immediately...

1. if there are any charges made outside the U.S.
2. if there are any charges made without the physical card being swiped (that is, purchases made by phone or online).

If I get an email for a purchase I don't recognize, I can call the credit card company immediately.

There are other alert settings available, these are just the ones I've chosen.

You could probably set it up for a text message, but I don't want it to wake me up in the night (i have email set to manual fetch).

Good luck.

 

[spncity]

I use a virtual CC number from Discover or ATT Universal card. By using a virtual number only the payer that first uses it, can use it for recurring charges. Works great for everyone for online purchases, except Amazon, as each vendor bills separately. So even if my CC card number changes, the virtual number that Netflix or the electric company stays the same.

I like this idea.

 

[Alan]

A tip for you all: if you put recurring charges on a credit card, get a CC for that purpose only and never use it anywhere else. We did that after having to go through the song and dance of moving all our accounts over after a fraud. The second time our card was compromised, we didn't have to do anything but wait for a replacement.

I also did this after our CC info was stolen last time and definitely recommend it.

I use a virtual CC number from Discover or ATT Universal card. By using a virtual number only the payer that first uses it, can use it for recurring charges. Works great for everyone for online purchases, except Amazon, as each vendor bills separately. So even if my CC card number changes, the virtual number that Netflix or the electric company stays the same.

I like that idea.

 

[East Texas]

Very aggravating. We've just come through a very annoying spell where someone signed us up for Experian credit protection services at $14.95/month. We had the charges reversed by our CC (credit union) provider but declined to have our account closed as we have a LOT of automatic payments so that would be a big PITA**. Then the charge showed up again. I called the number in the CC transaction log and after a few minutes of discussion, they agreed to reverse the charges and block the account. So far, so good. But annoying.

The same thing happened to me about three years ago. A $14.95 charge showed up on the credit card with a description something like credit monitoring (something innocuous so it wouldn't hit a fraud flag). The first charge posted - I guess they wanted to make sure it could go through. Then 12 more $14.95 charges hit - and went into pending. The USAA fraud department took care of reissuing the card, sending me the fraud affidavit, and doing whatever they do with the charges.

I keep a password protected spreadsheet so I know where the card(s) are used for recurring payments. It made it easy to transition from the hijacked card to the new card number.

 

[fritz]

Amazon accounts are set up to store your credit card on file when you create it (for purchasing), but it's not required to maintain the account. I input it for purchasing and remove it after the item(s) have shipped.

 

[Lsbcal]

Maybe one way to protect against this is to not give the card to someone who disappears from site like a restaurant employee. So we use cash for these "credit card would go out of sight" transactions.

I went to this method after a fraud some years ago which may have been linked to a restaurant VISA usage.