My credit card got skimmed and sold!!

[njmom47]

Pulling receipts for fraudulent transactions is part of my job. I have seen disputes, inquiries and chargebacks to our company from people all over the world (Italy, Germany and China are some I can think of off the top of my head) as well as all over the US regarding fraudulent usage of someone's card # in our stores.

 

[SandrA9810]

Pulling receipts for fraudulent transactions is part of my job. I have seen disputes, inquiries and chargebacks to our company from people all over the world (Italy, Germany and China are some I can think of off the top of my head) as well as all over the US regarding fraudulent usage of someone's card # in our stores.

Wow, is there anything in particular your store does to try and prevent from having credit card fraud? Or have they perfected it so well that it can slip right under the nose of the cashier?

 

[WheelCEO]

For those that have not seen this "scam" in action.. it is pretty sophisticated. The thieves typically have credit cards that look EXACTLY like the ones of the #'s that they have stolen.. they aren't "blank". They say AMEX/Visa/MC they are the same colors, numbers printed on front and so forth. A store clerk, let alone the credit card companies themselves would most likely not even be able to tell the difference.

 

[PHXscuba]

We had this type of thing happen TWICE last summer. The first one we were never sure how they got the info but they made the mistake of trying to purchase something in Hong Kong and it shut the card down immediately. The bank was nice enough to overnight me new cards because it was our only credit card. They changed all my account numbers (real fun fixing all of the auto pays).

The second time we were on vacation in CA and I'm pretty sure someone at the LA zoo skimmed my card. The bank left me a message when I got home a couple days later that someone tried to buy hundreds of dollars in gift cards at an LA Target. I told them I was in Disneyland from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. that day so I was sure it wasn't me! Luckily, I had acquired another credit card by this time (a Disney VISA!) so I had another card to use while they issued me new cards and we reset ALL of the auto pays AGAIN!

Sadly, I think this type of thing can happen no matter how careful you are. It pays to have the alerts set up and to keep a close eye on your credit statements.

PHXscuba

 

[starwood]

I've had more problems with that than I can count. I've gone through 3 Disney Visa numbers within the past couple of years. The last time I had small charges showing up for parking in Boston (we live in NJ). One time DH saw a charge for over $1000 at a Best Buy in Annapolis MD. We never had to pay any of these charges but it such a pain to get a new credit card number and then let all the places on autopay know the new number. I always end up missing one.

 

[mkel34]

This is one reason why I like Fridays (I'm fairly sure it's them), they have the mini wrist computers, so the waiter/waitress scans the card automatically in front of you without ever leaving your sight.

You know that someone could be out in the parking lot with a laptop stealing the information that is being wirelessly transmitted right? If someone wants your information they can get it, all wireless encryption is hackable.

 

[SandrA9810]

You know that someone could be out in the parking lot with a laptop stealing the information that is being wirelessly transmitted right? If someone wants your information they can get it, all wireless encryption is hackable.

Anything is hackable and anything can be stolen if some one wants it bad enough. But it takes some intelligence to be able to steal the information that way. At the same time, those are the ones that can probably get into most security systems and steal a whole bunch of CC numbers from different places.

The low rung thieves are going to go with skimming, as the devices are premade, they just have to swipe the card and copy it.

Nothing is ever going to be safe in this day and age of technology. Cash, credit cards, bank accounts, social security numbers, it's all out there for the world to see.

 

[bumbershoot]

I still wonder why it was denied, grateful still, but wonder what triggered the decline.

That sort of thing is so mysterious. We've had our bank call us 3 times about fraud (on our debit card...they are just as vigilant with debit as with credit). Actually they called us twice, the third time, which was actually the time it was a bonafide charge attempt, they didn't call.

That third time was when DH pulled into a gas station all wrong in a rental car, swiped the card, then realized he couldn't get the hose to the tank on the other side. Pulled out, took a strangely long time turning it around, and the authorization had fallen off the card by then. Had to swipe it again, it was denied, which is totally for our protection of course, because it could easily have been a scam situation.

The other two times, however, the charges were TOTALLY within the realm of possibility, once from amazon, where we shop AND where the paychecks come from, that one was actually an error (not an error a normal person would have happen, but it was while hubby was in training and his trainer asked the employees to set up a special account with their OWN cc (whoops) and then he forgot to cancel the future charges), and even though it was well within the realm of normal charges for us, Chase denied it. They were brilliant that night (and hubby got to be the first one to report the training problem).

The second one I cannot recall, but it was again not outside of our normal spending habits...just happened to be *not us*.


Meanwhile, hubby travels all over, uses his card all over the place (nowadays he leaves his debit at home and just uses business and personal CC), and the computers manage to keep up with him. Whoever wrote their software for figuring out fraudulent charges has been pretty smart for us so far!

 

[squirrel]

So far I have been lucky. I call my CC company if I leave town so they know not to decline while I'm on holiday.

My sister has no been so lucky. She has had her CC # stolen at least twice. She even had the CC company call her within minutes of charges to the card to verify. My sister had to figure out if her husband would have made the charges as he drives into Vancouver or other areas for work.


Do the credit card readers also find out the PIN of a CC? It seems to be the newest thing to have a chip in the cards that you have to enter a PIN in order to complete the transaction.

 

[Swimalie]

You know that someone could be out in the parking lot with a laptop stealing the information that is being wirelessly transmitted right? If someone wants your information they can get it, all wireless encryption is hackable.

Best Buy has been known to have an unsecured network. People were doing just what you described. I will not shop there as a result.

 

[Jeff_G]

I wonder why the CC industry doesn’t go to some form of biometrics for charging, Disney can do it to let me into the parks why not at the point of sale machines.
For online purchases they can easily use the same technology as the RSA rotating token numbers (ie a number displayed on your credit card that rotates every minute). Heck even forcing all credit card transactions to use a PIN like a debit card would slow down some of the skimming’s…

 

[Swimalie]

I wonder why the CC industry doesn’t go to some form of biometrics for charging, Disney can do it to let me into the parks why not at the point of sale machines.
For online purchases they can easily use the same technology as the RSA rotating token numbers (ie a number displayed on your credit card that rotates every minute). Heck even forcing all credit card transactions to use a PIN like a debit card would slow down some of the skimming’s…

I lika the fact that all American Express from Costco have pictures on the back. Not all ask for it but it's nice to know it's there incase some one that doesn't look at all like me tries to use it.

 

[dawson5]

I lika the fact that all American Express from Costco have pictures on the back. Not all ask for it but it's nice to know it's there incase some one that doesn't look at all like me tries to use it.

My husband has his picture on his debit/credit card (bank of america MC). I don't think it was something that is widely known. He stopped in for some reason and ended up talking with the teller and she told him about it.

 

[thebeesknees]

We've had our Discover # stolen at least twice, three times if I recall correctly. My DH actually figured it out once before Discover did, since DH checks our card transactions religiously. One time, it was someone at Target who must have somehow skimmed the card, because I did make a purchase early in the day, then by 2 in the afternoon, someone had manually entered the number at Target (so it must have been an employee) and bought over $600 in gift cards. It is a real pain to get everything cancelled and then get new cards, but I do think that overall, the CC companies do a pretty good job of keeping an eye on possible fraud, considering the millions of transactions done each day.