How many have had their credit card number stolen?
 

Well, I've been in the credit/debit card equipment industry for almost 20 years now. I've seen lots of devices that criminals have installed in numerous types of equipment to steal credit card numbers and debit card numbers with their PINs but have never had it happen to me until now. My wife was in Europe for 15 days and she handles our finances. While she was gone someone got a hold of my debit card number which is also a Visa check card and used it at gas stations in TX, AZ and CA. They used it multiple times a day for $75-$100 per transaction and completely drained our account and put us at -$200. Luckily my house payment cleared before they drained it all. I now have to wait 10 days for the bank to reveiw it before they will give me my money back.

Anyone else had this happen to them?

Personally I've never had mine stolen before, but as you know I work at a large credit union so I see it on a daily basis.

Depending on who your bank is you might see if they'll give you provisional credit now while they do their investigation. We give it for almost all our fraud cases, but with a bank you'd probably have a 50/50 shot.

As far as preventing fraud, unfortunately it's not that easy. The newest fraud usually involves a small usb flash storage device being placed inside of a card terminal at gas stations, retail outlets, etc. From the outside their is no way to know that the machine has been altered. Generally they store numbers on this device for months before removing it and using the numbers for fraud. As you might imagine this can make it very difficult to backtrack because it's possible that your number was stolen 6+ months earlier than when the fraud occurred.

Sorry to here about your situation, but the good news is that you should have no problem getting your money back. If you have any other questions let me know.

I'm sorry to hear about this and hope it resolves in your favor.

I never use a debit card for exactly this reason. If it's a cash transaction I use a check or actual cash, but I'm old fashioned. I have had an Amex number stolen once, but it was more or less instantly caught by Amex, stopped and the card replaced immediately. (Separate issue, but Amex has by far the best customer service of any card company I've had to deal with.)


So my card strategy is:
- don't use a debit card except to pull cash from the ATM at my bank (minimized risk)
- use checks or cash for cash transactions
- use a cc (rewards cards are great, like Costco cash back Amex) as a cash substitute
- Put "See Photo ID" in signature space on card. (This obviously only stops cases where someone has stolen your actual card and the Vendor bothers to check the signature space, but that happens too. In Europe, at least the UK, you will NOT be reimbursed for fraudulent transactions on your CC if stolen.)

While I can see the logic behind your strategy, I would argue that cash is riskier than a debit card. With a debit card you have insurance and will get your money back. If you lose cash you're just plain out of luck.

Don't lose your cash . ;)

Further Elucidation
I only take cash and checks when I know I need to pay cash for something. Further risk minimization. Actually, I don't carry a blank check, I'll fill it out ahead of time. In short I rarely have more than a few dollars on me at anytime and use the debit in a highly constrained way. I use a cc, even for small transactions whenever possible.

In this way, even if my entire wallet is stolen, they can't use my debit, because they don't know the pin. There won't be any blank checks, no more than about 20$ cash (unless it's that rare occasion I'm carrying for a specific purpose), and CCs I can cancel all at once.

This is about the best crossing between risk/convenience that I can think of.

BTW, don't mean to sound like a prick about this, it's just a talent I have. I applaud the idea behind using a Debit card. It'd be great if it weren't for all the degenerates out there. I do effectively the same thing, just by way of CC that I net pay every month. Additionally I'm pretty crafty with the whole cash back thing, my Amex pays me several hundred dollars a year.

I was lucky....some how someone got my CC number and were charging $1.00 charges on it online and my bank( BOA) caught it. BOA told me $1.00 charges are a red flag and criminals "test" the CC Number that way. They figured it was a teen or young adult because the charges were to teen stores. (Forever21,Napster etc..) It was a total of 6 different stores totaling $6.00. Like I said I was lucky.Believe it or not, a lot of identity theft comes from your own garbage pail or mail boxes. It's a wise investment to buy a paper shredder and shred any documents containing your credit card numbers or social security numbers.
My wife was a victim of mail theft, she recieved a note from the postmaster general with her Sears statement. My wife called and asked why the post office had her Sears statement, and they informed her the police stopped a truck on the freeway with 3 men and boxes of mail from different addresses.
The men were arrested on the spot and each mail addressee was sent a notice about their mail being stolen.
My wife signed an affidavit wishing to prosecute those individuals.

My wife is flying out to Las Vegas to help (be a witness) prosecute the guy who stole her identity, and proceded to open 20 CC accounts and charge up $100,000 in her name. Luckily for us, we caught it on her credit report, and notified Anaheim PD, LVPD, and the post office before the first billing cycle. The Postmaster General is prosecuting on Felony charges of mail tampering, and the boy is going down BIG TIME> Because of our quick reporting, Teri has been absolved of any and all CC bills, and the court will be reimbursing all expenses thru the "victims of crime" program.
Sometimes, the system works, and works well. (The guy NEVER saw them coming).

That's excellent :drink:

This is a good reminder to everyone that you should pull your credit once a year to check for new trade lines. Go to www.annualcreditreport.com to do this. DON'T GO TO freecreditreport.com. It signs you up for a monthly monitoring service that they charge you for. It's very difficult to get them to stop.

I got hit twice. Once someone stole my cc number that I never used before, and bought pizza in Indiana 3 times. 2nd time someone bought $800 plane tickets to go to Puerto Rico or something like that. I got my money back for both things. But they gave me a hard time about the pizza. Wells Fargo kept asking me if I was sure I didnt buy pizza over there. I told them that yeah, I went over there, bought pizza, and some how bought stuff over here at the same time.