Stolen Credit Card Numbers and Companies with a Clue (was Re: TidBITS#772/28-Mar-05)
At 5:48 PM -0800 3/28/05, TidBITS Editors wrote: Stolen Credit Card Numbers and Companies with a Clue by Adam C. Engst [EMAIL PROTECTED] Credit card number theft is one of those events that seems to happen only to other people... until it hits you. That just happened to me, and the repercussions proved a bit more instructive and far-reaching that I would have initially anticipated. **Awkward Dating** -- The first hint that something was wrong came when Tonya was reviewing the charges on the MasterCard we use solely for business purchases. There was a $19.95 charge to something related to Yahoo, but it wasn't possible to tell exactly what service from the limited information on the credit card statement. Tonya knew she hadn't ordered anything online that could have generated such a charge, and when she asked me, I couldn't remember anything either. To verify that I wasn't simply losing my memory, I searched all my received email around the date in question, and even went so far as to search my OmniWeb history for Yahoo URLs around the date. The situation was becoming more curious, so Tonya called the phone number on the credit card statement, and waited on hold for a while. As she waited, she realized that what she had called was Yahoo Personals - Yahoo's online dating service. She immediately yelled for me to get on the phone, figuring that the whole situation was just going to generate snickers for the customer service people if they heard a wife calling to find out about a dating service charge on her husband's credit card. I was good and refrained from making jokes about how I didn't even get any dates from Yahoo Personals once the customer service people came on the line. http://personals.yahoo.com/ It took a little back and forth with Yahoo's customer service people, since we weren't willing to give them much more personal information, some of which they claimed they needed to look up the account that had made the charges. Eventually we got them to tell us that the Yahoo Personals account did indeed have the same user name as my My Yahoo account (I immediately changed that account's password, just for good measure), but that the birth date listed with the Yahoo Personals account did not match either of our birth dates. That was sufficient for them to cancel the account and refund our money. **Cleaning Up from Cancellation** -- The Yahoo Personals customer service rep recommended that we cancel the credit card used, which we were already planning as the next call. Our credit card issuer was totally on top of it, cancelling the card and issuing us another one before we'd even had a chance to explain the full situation. Tonya keeps records of merchants that are automatically withdrawing from that credit card, so next she reset all of those accounts. The morning was shot, but it seemed that we were out of the woods. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. A few days later, Tristan and I were out driving when I remembered that our other car likely had a flat tire due to a slow leak I'd been monitoring. That normally wouldn't have been an issue, but Tonya had an appointment before we would be home, and I wanted to alert her to blow up the tire and to remember her cell phone in case she needed me to come change the tire while she was out. In New York State, it's illegal to drive while talking on a cell phone unless you're using a hands-free system, so I pressed the speed-dial number for home and handed Tristan the phone so he could give her the message. A few seconds later he gave me back the phone, saying It's being weird. I pulled over and listened, and indeed, I'd somehow ended up with Verizon Wireless customer service. I hung up and tried again, and got them again. This time I waited until I could talk to a person, who promptly informed me that they had disabled our service because the monthly bill had been rejected by our credit card - apparently one auto-withdrawal had slipped past Tonya's record keeping. Luckily, I was able to use another phone later to walk Tonya through inflating the tire, but the credit card fraud was increasing in annoyance. The next week Tonya managed to get the account reinstated, and protested sufficiently vehemently when Verizon Wireless tried to charge a $15 fee for doing so that they waived the charge. She pointed out that it would have been trivial for them to notify us via voicemail or text messaging that our auto-withdrawal had failed, but needless to say, the customer service drone couldn't do anything but forward the feedback (if even that). That wasn't the end of the bother, though the next one was purely my fault. I'd set up a Google AdWords account for Take Control that also withdrew money from that MasterCard, and I'd forgotten to inform Tonya that it needed to
Stolen Credit Card Numbers and Companies with a Clue (was Re: TidBITS#772/28-Mar-05)
At 5:48 PM -0800 3/28/05, TidBITS Editors wrote: Stolen Credit Card Numbers and Companies with a Clue by Adam C. Engst [EMAIL PROTECTED] Credit card number theft is one of those events that seems to happen only to other people... until it hits you. That just happened to me, and the repercussions proved a bit more instructive and far-reaching that I would have initially anticipated. **Awkward Dating** -- The first hint that something was wrong came when Tonya was reviewing the charges on the MasterCard we use solely for business purchases. There was a $19.95 charge to something related to Yahoo, but it wasn't possible to tell exactly what service from the limited information on the credit card statement. Tonya knew she hadn't ordered anything online that could have generated such a charge, and when she asked me, I couldn't remember anything either. To verify that I wasn't simply losing my memory, I searched all my received email around the date in question, and even went so far as to search my OmniWeb history for Yahoo URLs around the date. The situation was becoming more curious, so Tonya called the phone number on the credit card statement, and waited on hold for a while. As she waited, she realized that what she had called was Yahoo Personals - Yahoo's online dating service. She immediately yelled for me to get on the phone, figuring that the whole situation was just going to generate snickers for the customer service people if they heard a wife calling to find out about a dating service charge on her husband's credit card. I was good and refrained from making jokes about how I didn't even get any dates from Yahoo Personals once the customer service people came on the line. http://personals.yahoo.com/ It took a little back and forth with Yahoo's customer service people, since we weren't willing to give them much more personal information, some of which they claimed they needed to look up the account that had made the charges. Eventually we got them to tell us that the Yahoo Personals account did indeed have the same user name as my My Yahoo account (I immediately changed that account's password, just for good measure), but that the birth date listed with the Yahoo Personals account did not match either of our birth dates. That was sufficient for them to cancel the account and refund our money. **Cleaning Up from Cancellation** -- The Yahoo Personals customer service rep recommended that we cancel the credit card used, which we were already planning as the next call. Our credit card issuer was totally on top of it, cancelling the card and issuing us another one before we'd even had a chance to explain the full situation. Tonya keeps records of merchants that are automatically withdrawing from that credit card, so next she reset all of those accounts. The morning was shot, but it seemed that we were out of the woods. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. A few days later, Tristan and I were out driving when I remembered that our other car likely had a flat tire due to a slow leak I'd been monitoring. That normally wouldn't have been an issue, but Tonya had an appointment before we would be home, and I wanted to alert her to blow up the tire and to remember her cell phone in case she needed me to come change the tire while she was out. In New York State, it's illegal to drive while talking on a cell phone unless you're using a hands-free system, so I pressed the speed-dial number for home and handed Tristan the phone so he could give her the message. A few seconds later he gave me back the phone, saying It's being weird. I pulled over and listened, and indeed, I'd somehow ended up with Verizon Wireless customer service. I hung up and tried again, and got them again. This time I waited until I could talk to a person, who promptly informed me that they had disabled our service because the monthly bill had been rejected by our credit card - apparently one auto-withdrawal had slipped past Tonya's record keeping. Luckily, I was able to use another phone later to walk Tonya through inflating the tire, but the credit card fraud was increasing in annoyance. The next week Tonya managed to get the account reinstated, and protested sufficiently vehemently when Verizon Wireless tried to charge a $15 fee for doing so that they waived the charge. She pointed out that it would have been trivial for them to notify us via voicemail or text messaging that our auto-withdrawal had failed, but needless to say, the customer service drone couldn't do anything but forward the feedback (if even that). That wasn't the end of the bother, though the next one was purely my fault. I'd set up a Google AdWords account for Take Control that also withdrew money from that MasterCard, and I'd forgotten to inform Tonya that it needed to
