alko
New member
- May 23, 2011
- 4,342
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Sortof a long read but alot of lessons learned...
There are many different ways your cc number can get stolen. I remember a long time ago, I ordered movie tickets from fandango. At the end of the transaction, a message popped up on the screen asking me if I would like to purchase a "gift card" good for $20 bucks worth of movie tickets for $9.99. So I said sure...why not...I clicked on the message to get more info. After deciding I didn't want it, I closed out of the window. Well...6 months later, I was checking my bank account and I saw a $9.99 purchase for some entertainment company. Well, after googling the company's name, I found a bunch of fraud reports. It traced back to that message I click on...apparently when I clicked on the message, I was giving permission to this company to setup an account and withdrawl money every month. They had a hotmail address under my name and everything. So they'd been doing this for a good 6 months. When I called them up, they were extremely polite and quickly stated they would refund the total amount and close the account. I came to a conclusion from this...its easy to steal $9.99 from thousdands of people vs stealing thousands of dollars from 1 person. These companies work off the idea that many people DO NOT pay close attention to their checking account.
My father had his information stolen a couple of years ago. But his was MUCH worse. He does ALOT of shopping online and had to cancel his check card 3 times. How he finally found out was, someone out in virginia received a package that had his name on it. The contents of the package was like 300 belt buckles and belts. So they looked him up and called him saying there was a package for him. So after he started doing reseach on his account, he found a gang of charges. $500 worth of tickmaster tickets, those belt buckle and belts, other clothes...the list went on. Well he got all of his money back, kept cancelling his cards...but fraud activity kept going on on his account. Me personally, I think there was a key logger on his computer somewhere, because after I rebuilt it, the problems stopped.
Ever since the incident with my checking account, I check my account on a daily basis. This past Christmas, I saw a "pending" charge for a $900+ laptop from Lenovo. Well I called my bank and then called Lenovo. They provided me with all of the information that was used for the transaction. Apprently someone out in Cali tried to purchase this laptop. The charge was cancelled and no funds were withdrawn. At that time, I wasn't shopping online. But there are always clever theives out there. A big trend that was happening out here, last year, was waitors and waitreses were stealing credit card info. Think about it...you hand a waitor or waitress your card, you're basically giving them your info. They can easily copy down your cc number, expiration date, and security code. Its that simple.
Bottom line...BE CAREFUL on where you shop and check your bank account daily!