How did 'they' get hold of my credit card?!
I guess I'm an innocent when it comes to credit card hacking (if that's even the correct term), but yesterday I tried to use one of our credit cards to make an ebay purchase and my credit card was rejected (!!!).
Earlier that day I did receive a call from our financial institution where we have the card with, asking me if I had made purchases at around 2am...small things...$0.00, $1.00 (Vonage?!), and one for Vistaprint for about $37.00. I said, absoltuely not, and the phone call just said press some number if I dispute those purchases. I did, and then the phone hung up. Now....we never carry a balance on our cards, so of course I knew something was afoot.
So I called my credit card 800 number and got a real person to find out why my ebay purchase card was rejected, and he said it had a security alert on it. ??!! I asked why, and he rhymed off the purchases again made in the middle of the night and I said I absolutely had not made them.
No problem, he says, that's why I couldn't use my card....security at night f;agged my card as suspicious, therefore I couldn't use it.
So...he cancelled our card and the purchases that we weren't responsible for.
My question is.....this is a card I RARELY use because it has a high purchase limit on it (I usually use one we maintain a very low balance on in case something like this happens)...HOW in heaven's name did anyone get hold of it and "test" it by making a few small purchases??!!! I don't think I even used it for my vistaprint (calendar) purchase earlier in the month!
I perform weddings, and stupidly leave my purse at the bar or where someone I feel I can trust keeps it for me...but geez! If they can see me performing a wedding, they have all kinds of time to take my card numbers!!
AND so what?! They can't have those things delivered to their homes because the addresses don't match!
How naive AM I??!!