Credit Card Number Stolen

Just wanted to remind everybody to check their banking and credit card information continually. In the past month, my debit card number was stolen and my credit card number, from the same bank. Luckily I saw the charge on the debit card and called the bank. They immediately canceled the card and sent me a new one.

With the credit card number that was stolen, the bank called me and said there was a suspicious charge of 5 cents on it. This is called “fishing.” If someone steals you number, they put through a tiny amount to see if the card is good. If it goes through, then they pile on more charges. This is what happened with mine. Even though the card was canceled, I saw 3 more bogus charges on my card that had been put through before the cancellation. On one charge, they even had our last name and zip code.

Besides notifying the credit card company, I also tracked one of the charges that had contact info. Two charges were pending so I couldn’t find out what they were for. The one I did find was a billing company who said the charge was to an adult website subscription for $29.95 a month.

If you are getting credit card and debit card statements once a month, via mail, you might want to check them several times a week online (on a secure computer-no wireless or public computers). By the time you get a statement, much damage can be done.

We have virus protection on our computers but I think I was a victim of the recent virus that was going around. I got a pop up yesterday, which looked like it came from my own computer, telling me hundreds of trojans were found and I could click on “repair now” to get rid of them. I closed all the windows and checked my own virus protection and did a complete virus scan, which didn’t find anything like that.

What troubled me was that it looked like my own computer control panel had come up, not a pop up. It would have been easy to click the “repair now” button, thinking it was my computer asking me to do this.

It’s a sad world out there when things like this happen so often. It’s up to each person to protect themselves from fraud though. Most banks are good about removing charges and issuing new cards. I asked our bank if they investigate these frauds and they said no. You have to report it to fraud investigators yourself. I imagine it is so frequent that police and officials are overwhelmed with it.

I’m to the point where I don’t really want to use any of these “conveniences” anymore.

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