identity theft

[Tuckervill]

I noticed a charge in my bank account for about $8. Then another one for about $12. I didn't recognize it, so I googled the "company" name, and the 800 number associated with it. I found a whole message board full of people that had these charges.

Somehow they got my debit card number from somewhere. No one on the message board ever got more than $50 taken from their accounts. I guess they assumed no one would notice eight bucks at a time. Eight bucks times a thousand people is a lot of money--they weren't too greedy--they will just take a little bit from everybody.

I had to sign an affidavit that those weren't my charges and the bank gave my money back. It was my debit card, not my husband's. On the message board, we could find no common thread--paypal, online purchases, whatever. I think these scum pay for ordinary thieves working in restaurants or whatever to "harvest" cc numbers, you know? I'll bet if you googled how to sell credit card numbers, you could find it.

I, too, put the fraud alert on my credit account. Some creditor grantors won't even consider your app if there's a fraud alert on it, so that can be hassle. We just decided not to apply for credit at all for that 90 days.

Karen

[shootingstar]

After reading all this, I will stick to the same forever for the rest of my life...no debit card. I actually don't feel comfortable punching in password, etc. with people standing around me...

And will continue to discipline myself financially..yea sure I never had have the debit card convenience but I shouldn't make spending money so convenient for myself anyway.. If my parents raise 6 children on a cook's salary (my mother was a housewife) and they never used debit card, rarely used credit card...then I can discipline just for myself and organize methods of payment in advance.

One of the Canadian banks is actually experimenting with debit cards/activation via a keyring fob... can you imagine??? That's too convenient..

[Mr. Bloom]

I've not been able to read all of these messages, but a couple of initial thoughts:

Card numbers are not only compromised with online transactions.

Everytime a card is scanned at a retailer, that retailer's hardware is potentially compromised by hardware or software installed by a dishonest employee. There are safeguards, but they're not perfect. Online is clearly riskier though.

I don't use debit cards. PERIOD. We put all our purchases on a credit card and pay the balance off each month. While I acknowledge that their popularity grows, I still view them as a conduit into my cash accounts. Technically, my ATM card is a debit card, but it's not tied to our main accounts and I rarely even use cash. I may be outdated and old school in my concern, but I feel that the consumer has more protection against fraudulent credit card usage (but I've not reviewed the laws recently).

I would NEVER USE A DEBIT CARD ON AN ONLINE TRANSACTION. Much more risk and protection can be less available if YOU don't have current spyware/virus detection software on your computer. Use PayPal as a safer intermediary and they can debit directly from your checking account. I still use a credit card for online purchases unless it's through PayPal.

Mr. Silver Mom got a telemarketing call where she wound giving out her checking account # (to me, similar to a debit card)...After 9 months, I'm still dealing with the implications, and although I tracked and recovered the $1,000 that was stolen from her to NY, then Canada, then California...I will assure you I had better things to do with my time then deal with that.

JMHO...

[Duck on Wheels]

I've had this happen to me, in one sense or another, twice. Once I got a call from my cc company asking had I bought about $5000 worth of telephone cards in Berlin a few days ago? Well, I'd been in Berlin, but I definitely hadn't bought phone cards! If they wanted, I could send them my cell phone charges to show I'd been using my usual cell phone nr., but they didn't need any further proof than my say-so. They sent me a form to fill out and, as long as I was willing to witness in court should they catch the thief, they were willing to credit my account back. Whew! I'm pretty sure the thief was somebody at the swanky restaurant where the whole research team had lunch one day. It's the only place I used the card but for the hotel where I regularly stayed for meetings in Berlin. My guess is that the restaurant found and fired the thief and settled out-of-court with the company just to keep the problem out of the news.

Second time it was my US publisher (only one book, so they're also my only publisher ). They'd had a break-in and one computer that was stolen had all their authors' names and tax and account info on it. So far I haven't noticed any unauthorized movement on my account. Nor have I noticed anybody using my social security number to open up charge cards etc. It'd be hard to do since I have no US credit rating. The publisher signed us all up for one year of free credit tracking, but of course you never know when an ID thief will decide to start using the info. The credit tracking co. sent us all a FAQ sheet about what they advise you to do if that happens, and boy did it look like a major hassle!

I think that hassle is just as major be it a cc or a dc that gets hacked. The banks where I have visa cards all carry insurance and guarantee reimbursement on the same basis as my cc company, so I just try to live my life with normal caution and hope for the best. Now I'll hope the best for all you other ID-theft victims as well!

[uk elephant]

Just watched a program on tv (bbc) the other night about identity theft. Scary stuff how easy it is to steal your identity either on-line or the old fashioned way by stealing paperwork and you will have no idea how or when it happened. And so much information is available about you on the internet these days it is impossible protect yourself fully. There seems to be no way to fully protect yourself, but common sense things like good up-to-date virus and firewall software whenever you are on-line, never use the same password for several sites, critical of who you purchase from on-line and in real life.

I had my cc compromised a few years back too. No idea how they got the info, but somehow someone managed to have what looked like a very nice holiday in Morocco charged to my cc. The card was never missing from my wallet and I hadn't used it for nearly a year before it was compromised. Luckily the bank got suspicious of the charges and blocked the card before I even noticed and they cleared all the charges without too much hassle.