OT: Debit card fraud

Just wondered how many of us on the list have been victims of debit card fraud?

I have a habit of checking my debit (checking) account about every other day to make sure I don't miss putting an entry into Quicken. Well, recently I saw that I'd shopped at a shoe store. Not likely. I'd rather go to the dentist than buy shoes. That one had cleared.

Anyway, I check the account again at lunch, now I got some Harley shop hitting me for

960.00, JP cycles for 300 or so, and some other place for whatever. In total, my little checking account is being hit for 1600+. These are pending.

So I call the number on the debit card, get someone after 3 tries that barely speaks English who also wants me to wait and call back when the pending transactions turn into cleared. F that. I tell him deal with it now. He mumbles, I can't understand him and by the end of the conversation, he is supposed to email me a form to sign and return.

Well, before I leave work, I vnc into my home system using a ssh tunnel (for the geeks) and I can see I don't have said email.

Now I head to my local bank. My "personal banker" looks in the system, figures out that the email should come to me tomorrow because the guy didn't want to deal with the one that cleared already and wanted to do all at once.

This banker calls the Harley shop in Florida (a long way from Michigan) and id's himself as a bank officer investigating suspected fraud. They basically told him to f off. I'm not going to feel bad when they eat near a grand. Since the debit was only a few hours old, UPS or Fedex had not likely picked up the order. They could have saved some bucks by talking to the man.

So I file the claim, the shoes are credited back the next day but the bike stuff keeps hanging out there for days. Finally they clear it. So I wait, a week later I visit them again, 'personal banker' isn't there, another guy is. He does some keyboard tapping and tells me it will be back Monday which it was.

Now I'm trying to figure out how my card was compromised. I'm thinking some on line merchant I delt with was hacked. I tend to use my credit card for sites that are not major retailers.

If I eat out on business which is seldom, I use the credit card, not the debit card.

As far as the computer(s) being hacked, I'm pretty carefull, hide behind a firewall, use pegasus mail, keep up on patches and run the microsoft malicious software removal tool periodically in detail mode. I also use spybot and teatimer and of course, my brain.

Wes

Reply to
Wes
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Wes, it sucks and thanks for sharing. No one knows how they got your debit card number. Most likely something was stolen from a hacked merchant or payment processor. This is a regular occurrence lately. You did what you did all right. I also check my accounts daily. I also never, ever log on to any sensitive websites, or reveal any of my passwords or credit cards, from MS Windows.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus29099

I'm starting to wonder what level of paranoid I need to be to do on line purchasing.

The 'bankers' kept trying to get me to use their bill paying systems. I read the terms and conditions and it looked to me like it gets around safeguards in law protecting my debit card currently. When did honor go in our culture?

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Reply to
Wes

Wes, maybe I should learn something, can you explain what you mean here? I wanted to sign up for autopay on my personal credit card, but have reservations. Is that what you are talking about?

i
Reply to
Ignoramus29099

The bank has a system where you enter payments to those you want paid periodically. It isolates your debit card from the payment but the terms seem a bit slanted into the banks favor.

Autopay is a bit different. You preauthorize periodic payments. The one thing to think of is a dispute. I'd rather deal with someone with a beef that doesn't have my autopay in hand.

The phone company and a while back GMAC were the only ones that were on autopay. Long distance was turned off on the land line so there wasn't a possiblilty of some dialer viruse racking up charges (also no line to modem).

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Reply to
Wes

Hey Wes,

I've been hit three times so far.

First time was a kid stealing mail from mailboxes. He got nabbed trying to buy a saddle. The sales girl asked him to wait while she checked stock when the card came by closed!

Next one was a charge for nearly a grand from Walk About Medical in Australia. I don't have a clue on that one.

Last time was last year. My GF needed some help with the electric bill one month and I paid it with my Visa. The only place in town to pay that bill was a seedy little convenience store where the clerk wore a turban.

Next month the electric company charged me over a grand - for a different account.

That one took six months to get cleared! They (electric company) kept telling the fraud investigators that they were going back the charge off, but never did.

But here is a twist on the toxic debt scam!

Over a year ago, I got a letter from a collection agency saying they were collecting on a debt of a bit over $1500 - for Verizon.

I called Verizon and after talking to everybody in the company finally got to the guy who could do something. (Larry the Verizon guy)

He called the collection agency and told them that Verizon had no such debt on record.

THEY, then, packaged that up with a bunch of other stuff and sold it to another collection agency - who contacted me about a debt they wanted to collect for Verizon for (drum roll please) a bit over $1500.

So I called Larry the Verizon guy again. He took care of it, but he also alluded that this was not at all uncommon.

Toxic debt collection?

Too far out...

Reply to
cavelamb

On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:29:51 -0500, the infamous Wes scrawled the following:

him and by

the one that

some bucks by

Have you changed banks yet?

Ditto here.

Both times my cards were hacked, I got a call from my bank asking if I'd made the purchases. Fifi Boutique? I don't think so. Money from stripped account was back in place the very next morning in the first case, and they caught it before the loss the second time.

I use one of two cards online all the time, 350 times with eBay/Paypal alone, lots to Amazon, shoe stores (gotta have those cheap Reebok Classics, y'know), just all over.

Twice is 2 times too many, but still not bad for a decade and a half. I don't think I ever had a card hacked before the Internet.

---------------------------------------------------- Thesaurus: Ancient reptile with excellent vocabulary ====================================================

Reply to
Larry Jaques

to make sure

understand him and by

the one that

some bucks by

visit them

you don't even need to get hacked.

Just generating a valid CC number isn't as hard as it sounds.

I've had bogus activing on my card before, once was from an inside job at home depot (shitty employees) and another was probably just guessed. That charge was for $1.99 or something really small and weird.. The bank wanted to "wait" and all that shit, but I told them to shut off the card immediately which they finally did. There's no reason to see if phoney charge posts, at all.

Reply to
Cydrome Leader

The same place it has always been. Where do you think the expression "don't buy a pig in a poke" came from :-)

Cheers,

John B. (johnbslocomatgmaildotcom)

Reply to
John

An additional thing you can do is get a card with a very low maximum. My wife and I have such a card that we use for all online purchases ( and only online purchases). It does not stop credit card fraud, but it does stop anyone from buying very much.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

An additional thing you can do is get a card with a very low maximum. My wife and I have such a card that we use for all online purchases ( and only online purchases). It does not stop credit card fraud, but it does stop anyone from buying very much.

Dan

You can get a set of one time numbers for online use from most CC companies.

Reply to
Bill McKee

They always do a small charge first. Son in law lost his debit card in Costa Rica. First charge for about $5 at a convienence store. Next was $1200 for 2 surf boards. First is to see if the card is good. 2nd was probably in conjunction with the surf shop.

Reply to
Bill McKee

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Reply to
Usual suspect

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