I Didn’t Order That!

Ouch! Sorry you are having to go through the headache. I had that happen once with someone doing it to the yahoo personals to me, long time ago, not to the amount you did, but it was taken care of. I will give my bank this much, I did get one of my cards reissued with thousands of others after a European server got hacked, and my account was listed with many others, they did this as precaution. I just never understood how my number was over there, when my bank was out of TX. Good luck on tracking whoever did this, like finding a needle in a haystack. Ironic though, the Christian dating site…do you think it is a sign? ;p

Sorry for that crap. I am not sure how I am lucky/unluky enough to have my bank decided to call me once a month to verify 4 random charges. Fail to return there calls or verify the chagres and my account gets frozen.

Good Monday Morning everyone…everybody sure they know what’s going in in their wallet?

Damn, Meghan. You don’t have to lie. I KNOW you love amateur Ukranian porn.

But, you’re right. That Christian Mingles thing was overboard.

I was a pioneer in identity theft (NOT the greateset thing on which to Lead the Way)and back in the day, it was harder to convince the card companies you were a victim. So that is one thing to be thankful for; they now believe there is a problem!

This obviously sounds like a mean-ass practical joke, and yes, you should prosecute. It is eqivalent to getting a restarining order. It doesn’t always work to solve the problem, but mostly it does. it is teaching a bully that you mean business. I would also, if there is sufficient evidence of the perp, get phone and paper restraining orders on him/her/it. Yes, you can get those, where a person is enjoined to keep off of your phone and your information.

Thoughts on how it happened: all they need is one look (at any time) at a statement. Ladies, you may love him to death today, but keep your mailbox secure, and your bills in a secure place, in case he goes around the bend tomorrow.

Sad topic to start a good month, but…timely! Internet shopping is truly a crapshoot.

I think someone might be trying to tell me something…my local news is doing a story on internet credit card scams right now!

Perhaps it’s time to hang up my web whoring ways? Errr…I mean, overabundance of internet shopping.

So sorry Megs! But on the upside now you have another reason to drink during this jolly season.

$200 to Itunes. That’s what someone charged with my bank card.

I do have an Itunes membership, but I haven’t bought anything since April and that was the only thing ever. Oh and I paid for that one little download a total of .99 cents…. with paypal.

I’ve given it over to my bank. They did give me the $200 back, but only temporary until the figure out if I actually charged the $200 or not. They say it’ll take 90 days a month or so ago.

I wasn’t going to spend that temporary money. I was going to leave it until they made their decision if I was at fault or not. Though with the holidays I’ve spent the temporary money and with the holidays it’s impossible for me to save it back up.

So, please pray, or whatever you do that the bank finds in my favor… that I didn’t charge $200 to Itunes… because otherwise I’ll end up with a ton of overdraft fees.

People never stop to think that as this world gets smarter and more advanced, so do the criminals. Because of my constant traveling, I have to fork out money for an added protection plan. If it’s worth anything at all, it’s to avoid this conversation: “Yep, the $100 massage in Matamoros, the $410 4am ATM charge at Mandalay Bay, and the $181.95 from The Seville Club in Minnesota are valid, but there’s no way that $24 from Denny’s is mine, oh wait, that one actually could be mine too. Oh forget it.”

I haven’t had my identity thieved (at least, not that I know of), but you can bet that when it does happen, I’ll be pressing the “Prosecute” button AT LEAST 33 times.

Oh my…what great fun you have had with this one! I have had my checkbook stolen. I was staying at a posh Los Angeles hotel many moons ago. The asshats waited thirty days and drafted $1100 out of my bank account. It was thirty more days before I had access to my funds.

Thank god this has never happened to me.

If someone stole my credit cards it would be hilarious since they’re all basically maxed out. So even if I stress every day about my debt, at least I know no unauthorized purchases are going through. And there’s about 6 hours a month when I have money in my bank account - it comes in and goes right back out.

My identity theft protection - poverty.

I keep coming in here…and having nothing to say. That just plain sucks. =(

Oh…and every time I see that ‘Christian Mingle’ add on my yahoo mail I will shake my fist at the sky…for you.

xx

Damn lil sis, sorry you have to go through all this crap. It sucks. I had a good friend that alomost the same thing happened to. Hang in there.

reg

The Ukranian’s are making amature porn now? Sign me up!!!

Serious, that sucks. I’ve been fortunate enough that I’ve never been a victim (knock on wood). I hate those f—ing scumbags!

Takes a lot of Christmas spirit to regain a joyful attitude after something like that!

Scumbags.

Hopefully you get your money back soon - you’ll need it for a therapeutic night down the street!!!

Actually, this sounds more like a case of credit card fraud than full-blown identity theft. Thank your lucky stars it isn’t the latter because it’s a lot nastier.

Typically, identity theft takes longer to discover and is a lot harder to recover from. Usually people don’t find out about it until they either check their credit report, bill collectors start calling inexplicably, or they’re trying to get a loan and the bank says they can’t give you a loan because of your bad credit (and you’re like, WTF?!?! my credit score should be totally awesome!). The person then discovers from the credit report that there are accounts for credit cards you never signed up for with billing addresses in places you’ve never even visited with thousands of dollars in charges for stuff you never bought. Then, when the person gets things all straightened out with the banks and the unauthorized accounts are closed, it can happen all over again because the identity thief has your social security #.

Credit card fraud is easier to fix. You call the bank and they cancel the card number and the thief is cut off. They can’t continue the fraud because the piece of information they had (the credit card number) is now useless.

As for how they got your number in the first place, it’s usually a retailer with poor security policy that’s to blame. A website vulnerable to SQL injection attacks, a firewall policy that doesn’t adequately protect the customer database, failure to store the credit card # in an encrypted column in the database table (or not store the number at all), a shifty employee that copied the whole company database to a jumpdrive and took it home unnoticed, the poor IT policy that allowed the sales rep to keep the whole customer database on their laptop which was then stolen when they left it at the table for “just a second” while they ordered another double latte and chatted up the barista, the office worker who can’t resist clicking the link in a forwarded email claiming to show pictures of Anna Kournikova nekked who ends up infecting the company network with a Trojan horse, the CEO who says that he can’t remember all these damn complicated passwords and insists that an exemption from the rules be made in his case so he can have his passwords be stuff he can remember easily like the names of his adorable grandchildren, the restaurant waiter/waitress who wrote down your card number when they ran the bill, etc., etc.