I'm the victim of credit card fraud.

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Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:34 am

I had a call from my bank this morning to confirm with them that I have been using my credit card during last night purchasing online to a cost of more than $4,000.00. Shocked

Considering, I watched TV with my daughter, went to bed to read and only woke at 6.30am, it sure scared the crap out of me. Of course, since becoming a member here I am really cautious and wouldn't give the woman who rung any details and asked for a phone number to ring, checked it out on the bank website and called. I told the woman who answered that I had received a call from this other lady and she comfirmed that this other lady did indeed work in their fraud department and because of the times of purchase, they were alarmed.
There are 2 purchases to register.com for $1325.00 each, $1072.95 to (and get this) westernunion.com, a couple of small charges to yahoo.com and some otheres to checkout.com, number2co.com and star.com.
The last purchase was made at 5.30am Australia time.
At least the bank has said I do not have to honour any purchase that isn't mine and the card is closed, new one being sent.
Jeezzz, you always think it will happen to someone else. Nothing like real life to bring you back down to earth with a thud. Mad

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:42 am

Do you have any idea, where the scammers had your CC details from? Shocked

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:52 am

I had the same thing happen to me a couple of years ago. My sister also had it done to her previously also.

The only thing I had to do was send a letter to the CC company saying that I did not make those purchases.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:55 am

No, they just said that if I use paypal, which I do and I buy online from Amazon, there is always grey areas where the details can be passed to a 3rd party. But then again, she also said that using it at the corner store can be just as risky if somebody decides to hold onto your details. Confused

I can tell you though, it gave me one heck of a shock, I just have to wait until about Wednesday when the details will be on the online banking page and I have to ring them and tell them which ones are mine and as I haven't used the card for quite a few days, it should be quite easy.
God, I need a drink and it's only 10.55am. Shocked

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 1:12 am

This has happened to me twice. The first time was a few hours after I ordered some flowers online for my sister via a well known international florist ****flora. The bank called to ask (a) was I in San Diego and (b) was I purchasing domain names and other internet crap. No, and No. The card was immediately cancelled and the bank had to wear the $7,000. Interestingly, I later discovered that the florist's US online order centre is based in, yes, San Diego so I am pretty sure an employee there stole my card details but the company got very jumpy when I asked them if this was possible.

The second time was weird. I'd been to Europe for a long trip and used my credit card for most transactions. The statement arrived and everything tallied up apart from a $14 charge for Pottery World or something at Madrid Airport. I hadn't been to Spain and queried the charge with the card company and they said they'd investigate. I didn't hear from them and to be honest I didn't get too bent out of shape over 14 bucks so I forgot about it. Two months later the bank called to ask if I'd purchased $10,000 worth of Alitalia air tickets. Errr, no. Again, the card was cancelled and the bank had to absorb the $$$.

This one was interesting because if my card was used to purchase specific airline tickets then presumably when "Mr Gnasher" presented his ticket to fly then his passport would have been in the name of Mr Gnasher too. I don't have a particularly common first or second name so I highly doubt it was a lucky coincidence unless someone who DOES share my name spends their time looking through stolen card details until they find someone with the same name? To this day I have NO idea how they got hold of my card but assume it was probably a dishonest waiter or shop assistant because I did not use the card online during the whole of my trip. I think the $14 in Madrid was a 'test' to see if the card would be cancelled and when it wasn't they went on a spending spree.

In neither occasion was I out of pocket but it was a royal pain in the ass to notify all the people who needed to know that I had changed my card twice in 18 months.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 1:18 am

i use www.3v.ie when buying online,(i`m not sure what countries it covers, but there`s bound to be an alternative)
just calculate the total amount of what you want and buy a voucher slightly above the amount, (you can only buy in units of 10)
if online details get stolen, the thieves are not going to have much to play around with.

it`s far from perfect but it helps.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 2:54 am

I like your bank Smile

up on their toes being alarmed like that

my parents bank gave them a call on the mobile phone when they went out of the country,
if it was them doing the unusual spending of money.
They didn't do the paranoid call back thingy, but that was before my time at eater Wink

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 5:57 am

I tend to use a Visa Debit Card for all my online Visa Card dealings.

It works just like a Visa Credit Card, but is limited to the money I have in my account at the time.

I normally keep a nominal amount in the account (say $5-$10) to cover monthly bank fees, and only move more money in a day before I actually buy something.

This does not entirely make me immune to fraudulent usage, but it does help to minimize the potential for misuse. Smile

(It also requires me to spend a little more time to think about impulsive large purchases!)

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 9:47 am

You got yourself a good bank. A few days ago I had a transaction of over �300 posted to my credit card. I rang them to find out what it was - turned out to be an insurance renewal which I'd cancelled some time ago. When I told them that the transaction was unauthorised, they didn't want to know. Their response was that as I'd taken the insurance at some point I obviously want it to be renewed, so I'd have to take it up with the insurers. Mad

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 10:21 am

Yeah, I agree that the bank is pretty damn good. I am even going to write to the powers that be and acknowledge how they helped me in what could have been a nasty situation.
Sometimes we get caught up in moaning about service etc, and forget to let business' know when we have been treated well. Very Happy

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:05 pm

In my country there is insurance for every credit card. We pay a special fee for this every year. If something unusual happens they contact the card holder immediately to minimize their own damage. My card number was also stolen once - and the guys on the credit card company called me to ask if I'd use my card for fuel twice in a day. I didn't have a car then, filling the fuel tank of my mom's car maybe once in two month.
It wasn't a big amount of money, but it was an unusual pattern of using the card.

It is a good thing their algorithms are so good.

One very important thing when you shop (offline) is to look at the receipt before you throw it away. Sometimes the credit card number is listed there in full, and if you throw it away someone might pick it up and use it.
Another thing - people have now cameras on their cell phones. When you hold your card it is a good thing to put your finger to cover some of the numbers, so if the man next to you on the line tries to take a picture of your card, he will not have the full number.

And last thing - automatic bank cashiers! (I forgot how they are called in English). In my country there was a fraud some time ago - criminals have put hidden cameras at the top of those machines. People came to withdraw money, and the camera had their card number and their secret security number that they had enter the machine. They created a false card and withdraw money from people's accounts. For this reason it is also good to cover the keyboard with one hand while typing in the number with your other. So a camera (or even the man beside you) cannot see the number you type.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

I noticed the other day, that even though the paper recipt that the resturant gave me had most of the card digits masked, the copy the machine printed for the resturant's records did not. I suppose that is necessary for audit purposes, but it still leaves a gaping hole for waiters to get card details.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:37 pm

I've had false charges on my card several times. Most notably, $14,000 worth of airplane tickets! I'm sure my card number was picked up from a hotel I was staying at. I travel a lot in Africa where this took place, but have also had false charges from a vacation in Portugal -- I was with my mother and other family members and we both had $5,000 worth of electric bills show on our cards (now that's a lot of utilities for 1 vacation!)

Of course, I wasn't held liable in either case. I forget what they did from the time in Portugal, but after the deal with the plane tickets they canceled my card immediately (even before I noticed) and sent me a new one that arrived in a matter of days. The charges were discovered when I was still on the road and when I phoned in they even offered to remove the block on my current number so I could pay some other hotel bills at the city I had moved on to.

Given these experiences, I must say that the card companies are usually very good! In fact... sometimes even to the point of being a bit annoying where I'm trying to make a large purchase and sale won't go through w/o calling in first to verify that it's me. I know this is good for security, but from overseas these calls have sometimes become expensive and time consuming (you can call collect, but not usually from a cell phone).

Anyway, the trickiest "bad charge" of all was $150 from some store I'd never been to in South Africa. A smaller amount than the others so it slipped through the immediate alarm bells from the cc company and could have gotten past me if I didn't read my statement carefully. Still, like others have said, I just filled in a letter from the card company and they took care of it.

Lesson learned? Always read your credit card statements carefully.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 1:42 pm

i don`t understand why CC companies in this day and age don`t send out an SMS as soon as something is purchased. if it was your own purchase simply delete the message, if it wasn`t reply as soon as possible and that transaction can be immediately halted and the necessary steps taken.

i suppose that would be too straightforward for some companies Rolling Eyes

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 2:55 pm

My inlaws are both in their late 70's, and decided when a large supermarket opened that stayed open 24 hours, that it would be fun to go night shopping, after they had traveled into town to see a play or something.

The next day they got a call from a very worried bank, who could not get their heads round the possibility of an elderly couple out buying groceries at 2am!

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 3:56 pm

My Partner and I had our card details used to buy 64,260 Czech Koruna (�1500). Bank did the usual and contacted us and we didn't have to pay. I still have no idea where they got our details!

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 7:05 pm

Yeah, happened to me 5 years ago. Some jerk bought a lot of cell phones on a card of mine.
I was notified. Cancelled it out. AMEX is pretty good at watching the activity, and calling. I do have strange purchase habits, anywhere, anytime of day.
They can get the cc number from almost anywhere. It's almost worthless to worry too much about it, but CHECK YOUR STATEMENTS!!!

My favorite CC theft story didn't happen to me.

Neil Boortz, an overly opinated talk show host in Atlanta got egged into buying a bunch of bicycles for needy kids one christmas.
His name should be somewhat known in Atlanta, his face also.

He purchased a large number of bikes to give to kids at a large retail store.

The CLERK later ran through a bunch or purchases using his cc number!!
HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE?????
Of course, she was busted, prosecuted, and he mentions it frequently on his show ever since.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 8:20 pm

I agree that the card companies are pretty good at picking up unusual activity - sometimes too good. I went to Hong Kong last year and took a card that I don't use very often so I called the card company to alert them to the fact that the card was going to be 'active' for a few days for purchases made in Hong Kong. They confirmed this would be OK. Of course, when I got to HK and started using the card I discovered it had been blocked and I then had to wait half a day, cardless, the card company's HQ in the US to wake up. It seems that they can call customers any time 24/7, but customers can only call them during office hours. Grrrrrr

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 10:10 pm

^^^This happened to me too. The people doing the calling are the credit card company people. The people that you have to call are your bank that issued the card. We found this out when every customer at our previous bank had their credit cards denied for an entire weekend. Pretty embarrassing when it happened as I was hosting a birthday party at a restaurant. Somehow we were able to scrape up the dollars.

The bank had a hard drive with all the customer's info go missing out of a computer. As a result we've been on a credit watch for years. Its not stopped the random buys from gas stations but the credit watch has stopped new cards from being issued.

So we are in Lucerne, Switzerland when train ticket purchases are denied because a purchase in London and an automatic payment in Texas hit within minutes of each other the previous day. The 1-800 numbers in America don't work from Europe. Thank goodness the Intercontinental Hotel had a mini internet cafe where for 1 Euro you could hit the internet for 15 minutes.

I do notice that the cards now have numbers that can be called from overseas and I carry two at all times unless I am traveling, then there's a third in the luggage.

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 11:03 pm

Another method was carried out at a local garage near me for a period of time. They were using a card scanner to extract the info off the magnetic strip. This was done in seconds, A quick swipe and it is compromised. To do this requires that your card is out of your sight for a second. The moral is never allow it to be taken away, everything is done in plain view. Never allow it to leave your hands if possible. Of course in due time the persons responsible were caught. It was a large amount of money involved in the fraud.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 22 Nov 2006 Posts: 4

If you're in Australia, a bopo card is a good option.

www.bopo.com.au

It's a pre paid Visa, with some nice extra features like being able to suspend your card via SMS if you misplace it.

Master Baiter Joined: 10 Aug 2006 Posts: 143

My sister was a victim. She was using "pay at the pump", they had installed a scanner on the pump and someone was watching and got her PIN when she put it in.
They got $800.00 from her account over the next week. Fortunatley, the service station was under investigation at the time and she got her money back.

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 5:09 pm

SamSpudz wrote:

i don`t understand why CC companies in this day and age don`t send out an SMS as soon as something is purchased.

Some of us purchase online enough that SMS or text messages would be prohibitively expensive or extremely annoying. I would personally go through life with my trousers beeping or ringing a great deal...

And believe it or not, I know plenty of people who don't have cell phones, much less texting.

My company does allow me to set up email alerts. I have mine set up to alert me to any purchase over $10. I get an email, I check the charge.

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 5:41 pm

it obviously won`t work for everyone... nothing does, and the cost? that should be footed by the CC company, (but thats a joke all by itself) and the hassle? unsubscribe. tis simply an idea that could be a helpful part of fraud detection.

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 8:57 pm

mrsbean wrote:

I would personally go through life with my trousers beeping or ringing a great deal...

Too much information there MrsB - Back on topic

Quote:

And believe it or not, I know plenty of people who don't have cell phones, much less texting.

I have a mobile and it spends the majority of the time switched off. I have given the number to two people only. Any text messages I recieve are ignored and I have never sent a text message to anyone. I hate mobile phones.

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