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Good thread. I had no idea some of the tricky scanners and what not discussed here existed. Makes a person think.

Ill be shocked if the OP CC was obtained with out having physical access to the card

"Contactless payments are secure. Unlike RFID, which can operate at ranges up to 25 feet, contactless payment devices are designed with RF enabled technology that operates at very short ranges – less than 2-4 inches – so that the consumer needs to make a deliberate effort to initiate the payment transaction."

http://www.smartcardalliance.org/pages/ ... technology" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Seabear wrote:Never found out how they did it, but my business debit card was cloned and went shopping in Spain while I was in Corpus. Multiple purchases all under $100 ...I guess trying to stay under the radar. I caught it pretty quickly because I was online paying bills when the charges started popping up. The bank asked if I would press charges if they were able to track the perps down, however I have never heard anything back.

Did they happen to purchase from a scarf store? I got a call from my bank a couple months ago saying that someone bought ~$88 in scarves and tried to buy ~$206 in scarves two hours later. I got a call from an automated machine saying my CC might be stolen, but I didn't trust it bc it was an automated message. I then got a text saying the same thing 10 minutes later so I called the bank to try to sort things out. They told me that they cancelled my CC already and are investigating the fraud. Sent me a new card within 3 days.

The only place I use my CC (recently) in Corpus is at the Shell in FB or off Weber, HEB off staples, and Sports Clips. Crazy that they tried using it all the way in Spain?! Maybe that store is a front for something.

Thoughts?

One of my husband's credit cards was used to buy some electronics in Michigan. It was an account he does not use and the card never leaves the house. He saw an email confirming his purchase is the only reason he caught it. I can't stand a thief.

WinoVeritas wrote:My Discover has been hacked 3x, Visa 1x and MC 1x. None of the CC companies seem to give a flip. Issue new card and move on. I've "paid" for cruises, 100's of gallons of diesel and gasoline, computers, stereos and TV's or should say the CC paid as it cost me nothing. Same nonchalant attitude from USPS inspectors when neighborhood having many mailbox thefts which did cause me many problems. I expect not one person has seen the inside of a jail for my episodes - just hope they got caught on something else - once a crook pretty much stay same until caught. I do not have a debit card and have never used an ATM, even when I traveled extensively - don't even have PIN's to access if I wanted to.

Same experience here, I have had my Visa stolen 4 or 5 times in the last decade. One time, one of the companies that the thief had gotten stuff from, got nervous and started sending everything he ordered to the address on the card, which was my address. When I finally got my new card, I asked Visa what they wanted me to do with all the merchandise that showed up at my house? They told me just to keep it, they did not want to deal with it. They really don't care.

92f-fan wrote:Ill be shocked if the OP CC was obtained with out having physical access to the card

"Contactless payments are secure. Unlike RFID, which can operate at ranges up to 25 feet, contactless payment devices are designed with RF enabled technology that operates at very short ranges – less than 2-4 inches – so that the consumer needs to make a deliberate effort to initiate the payment transaction."

http://www.smartcardalliance.org/pages/ ... technology" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is still a big mystery.

My wife cannot recall a time the credit card has left her sight. If it was compromised by physical access it probably had to have been via a skimmer at the gas pump, as she only uses the card for groceries & gas, in which she personally swipes the card.

Due to our computer security and the fact that she seldom uses the card for online purchases, & 99.9% of the time with QVC,we doubt this was the breach. But assuming that her card was accessed via the internet, or skimmed in Beaumont when she bought gas with it, it's difficult to accept as mere chance that it was used 30 miles from where she happened to be at the same time.

We keep coming back to the skinny (meth head?) panhandler in the parking lot at Walmart. Certainly she was acting suspicious because she was scamming for money, but the fact that she didnt appear to have a walking impediment and had an aluminum cane (a hollow cane?), and she had a partner in her truck, and she kept trying to encroach on my wife's personal space, and the fact that she asked twice for my wife's name, and the card was used within 16 hours of meeting her, makes we wanna go hmmmmm?

We will probably never know as the credit card company doesnt seem real concerned, but yall keep your eyes peeled.

Does your wife have the numbers in her cell phone at all or use an application that has the numbers? I am not a techie, but I found info at item #6 in this article that indicates any android phone with the wi fi or blue tooth enabled can be used by someone nearby to snoop in the phone. I was at a festival recently and my phone began acting very strange. I took it out to make a call and it showed multiple applications were running. I shut off all running apps as soon as I finish with them so I had no idea why they were up. I shut them down and within a few minutes, they all came up again. I turned the phone off and removed the battery for a few seconds just in case that would help. I was surrounded by hundreds of people so there is no way to know if any of them was using a device to hack my phone. Here is the article that gave me some tips how to make my phone more secure:

http://www.cio.com/article/675129/Andro ... omyId=3061

Resturants here in Houston are the favorite place for people to use skimmers. The waiter takes your card to process the charge and skims your card while it is out of site. An employee at Jack-in-the box in Pearlnad was busted a year ago skimming cards.
The paywave cards can be stolen by someone just getting close. If your card has the ))) picture on it then you could get hit at any time.

I have had my Wells Fargo card replaced 3 times in 2 years because someone has stolen my card number. Small charges at first then they will try a larger charge. Wells caught it all three time but suck waiting for a new card.

TexasGal wrote:Does your wife have the numbers in her cell phone at all or use an application that has the numbers? I am not a techie, but I found info at item #6 in this article that indicates any android phone with the wi fi or blue tooth enabled can be used by someone nearby to snoop in the phone. I was at a festival recently and my phone began acting very strange. I took it out to make a call and it showed multiple applications were running. I shut off all running apps as soon as I finish with them so I had no idea why they were up. I shut them down and within a few minutes, they all came up again. I turned the phone off and removed the battery for a few seconds just in case that would help. I was surrounded by hundreds of people so there is no way to know if any of them was using a device to hack my phone. Here is the article that gave me some tips how to make my phone more secure:

http://www.cio.com/article/675129/Andro ... omyId=3061

Nope. Wife uses a no frills flip phone. I use a Blackberry that automatically locks after a set period of idle time, and requires a PW to re-open. I also have all means of access to off by default,( except the mobile network).

I strongly suspect the gal in the parking lot read the card and also suspect that there may be a known vulnerability the credit card companies are trying to keep the lid on.

If Savage is recalling things correctly, it indicates that the credit card companies may be very nervous about people learning how fragile the security is on cards that have RFID. Or maybe it's for other reasons. Either way, if true, it's revealing that those corporate giants would want to shut down such a public and prominent examination of the limitations of the technology. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10030509-52.html--

When I was in law enforcement, we caught credit card bandits red handed with the merchandise and had an airtight case wrapped up with a bow on it - until the credit card company told us they wouldn't even think of prosecuting for less than $25,000 and probably not even then. That number is probably a lot higher now.

Well I got a call about a week ago from one of my card companies. As your wife did, I called the number on the back to verify and sure enough, they asked if I had used the card at a local parking lot that morning which I had and then at a store in Barstow, Cal. an hour later, which of course I had not. They sent out a new card that day.

We've had a number of incidents on multiple cards with multiple financial institutions over the past 4 years.

1. Two different $1,800 charges at a hotel in Hong Kong - the bank (BoA) caught them and called use before we ever saw them.

2. A $1,500 pair of women's pumps was charged to our account. I turned it over to our local police. The story they told me is that foreign representatives promise to pay US citizens to complete transactions on merchandise using credit card numbers that they provide, claiming that the owners of the credit cards are too busy to waste their time. The foreign (Russian?) representatives then pick up the merchandise without leaving any trail. How they got our card number for this one is unclear.

3. On the replacement card for #2 and without the card being out of our sight or used for any other purchase, we received a credit card charge for a hair salon in Lubbuck. Again the police specifically investigated. The sequence number on the fraudulent transaction was way out of line with the other transactions in the same week/month at the hair salon, suggesting a network breach. The credit card company refused to cooperate with the police any more after that was discovered.

I now have a setup that I love. I use a card from Chase. Their smart phone alert is instantaneous based on the parameters that I set. I was standing in a food store checkout line in PA, swiped my card and the clerk finalized the transaction. My cell phone message alert tone surprised her a half of a second later. When I explained what had just happened, she was amazed. I have a similar setup on BoA with cards there but it can take them 24 hours to issue a similar cell phone alert. I keep multiple cards on multiple banks open to give me options if a fraud situation does happen. I monitor all the accounts daily through Quicken.

Around 2009 my BoA debit card was hacked. I was checking the balance online and saw that there was a $400 and change order from a clothing store in Spain. I called the bank and they gave me my money back and sent my wife and I new cards. Oddly enough this happened soon after we ordered Dominos when their new pizzas came out. They never alerted us that time. While we were traveling this summer they froze the card because we were making purchases in states we normally don't. We had to call and they unfroze it.

As for RFID chips I will try to avoid them at all costs. They can be hacked and have information stolen. Some researchers at MIT were able to hack a car and turn it off. They did this by using the TPS (Tire Pressure Sensor). It puts out a wireless signal to the computer. Then again I also don't want Onstar and any other such device in my vehicle either.

remington79 wrote:Around 2009 my BoA debit card was hacked. I was checking the balance online and saw that there was a $400 and change order from a clothing store in Spain. I called the bank and they gave me my money back and sent my wife and I new cards. Oddly enough this happened soon after we ordered Dominos when their new pizzas came out. They never alerted us that time. While we were traveling this summer they froze the card because we were making purchases in states we normally don't. We had to call and they unfroze it.

As for RFID chips I will try to avoid them at all costs. They can be hacked and have information stolen. Some researchers at MIT were able to hack a car and turn it off. They did this by using the TPS (Tire Pressure Sensor). It puts out a wireless signal to the computer. Then again I also don't want Onstar and any other such device in my vehicle either.

You should always call your credit card issuers when you travel. This can save a lot of headaches.