she’s got her mouth full.
proofread, proofread, proofread
Yeah - likely so. Though the combo of knowing my name, and having an adjacent phone number (my husband’s) suggests they’ve done some aggregation of info.
I’ll be putting credit freezes at the various reporting agencies.
I’ve tried that, it seems to only be 30% effective.
The good folks at Trader Joe’s got dinged for a multimillion-dollar settlement after a bunch of their store receipts revealed a lot more than 4 credit card digits. No biggie according to Trader Joe’s.
In other news, an airline revealed that only 0.03% of their flights crashed today.
If someone with bad intentions gets ahold of such receipts, they potentially could maneuver their way into a nice shopping spree.
I’m always slightly amused by the excessive fear of one’s credit card number getting stolen. IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME! Credit card fraud detection is pretty decent, and while I’m sure it happens, I have yet to meet someone who actually lost significant money to fraudulent transactions. Yes, it’s an absolute pain to switch cards and update all the various subscriptions and autopay using that number. But people aren’t losing their life savings over this.
Worry about stolen data that can’t simply be changed – SSNs, medical history, DNA, driving history, etc.
Uh, yeah, I would not at all be okay with that.
It makes me glad that I use tap-to-pay almost everywhere now, with my phone. Thieves can’t get a real credit card number off that.
That’s why I hate it though. It’s not just a pain, it can be a weeks-long or even months-long nightmare. My mom fell prey to scammers spoofing her bank (twice in the same year) and each time we were able to reverse the charges and get her money back, but it felt like having a second full-time job for a while correcting the fallout from it.
As per my OP, people should be more concerned about their checking accounts. To recap: We had over $16,000 withdrawn from our accout because someone managed to get a copy of a check and forge a fake one. Now, the money was recovered through banking insurance, but it was a PITA having to go file a theft report with local police, who then had to contact NYC police (where the check was written), do a cursory investigation and confirm that the address on the check was bogus, then wait for the refund. In the meantime, the checking account was locked down to prevent another occurance.
Agreed, bank accounts are way worse to lose than a credit card. Credit card companies usually catch the fraud immediately, and all you have to deal with is changing the numbers. With a bank account, there are a lot more hoops you must go through to recover the money.
With my mom it was her actual banking account that was compromised (again, twice in one year) so I guess that’s different than just a card.
But a card isn’t great either, especially if it’s used in a hundred online places and apps.
I hope it wasn’t because she reopened her account instead of getting a new one. Whoever did the crime still has her account info. I never reopened mine and - because of credit card fraud instances on this same bank - have all but closed out all aspects of that bank at this point.
Oh hell no. I made sure she got a new account and got extra security on it (like a verbal passphrase they give her when they contact her).
I recently found a $3600 charge on a card that I only used online, and I think I’ve actually only used it for balance transfers. It certainly wasn’t a card in regular use out in the world. It was just by chance that I found it within days of the charge because it had had a zero balance and was not on my radar to pay. That might have been ugly several months on …
I wonder how many of these bank and card scammers are traced, caught and prosecuted? I can see it being worth a bank or CC co’s time to go after big money, but the $250 pair of shoes or something? Granted, that’s probably the proverbial tip of the iceberg, but I can’t fathom how they track people down.
Maybe they don’t and that’s why we pay so much in interest 
I would think not many. I think a lot of compromised credit cards come from hackers who get into corporate data and then sell the numbers for others to use or sell. Some rando buying a pair of shoes in a store with a credit card has little chance of being caught, as the address for the card isn’t his address, and as long as he doesn’t get greedy or isn’t a known felon who gets caught on camera. . .
I recommend setting up alerts on all your cards so you get a text for every charge.
It’s the merchants that end up with the loss. When someone uses your stolen card to buy a $250 pair of shoes, the credit card company cancels the charge, and pulls the money back from the shoe seller’s bank (or never sends it to them in the first place). The credit card company is not out any money, but the merchant is out a pair of shoes.
I had the lovely and not at all embarrassing experience of having my card rejected after we ate at a restaurant. It had been locked down and the bank didn’t tell me. I didn’t have my other card with me, so had to ask the owner if I could go home and call them with the number. They were very nice about it, but it was still humiliating.
Not necessarily true; if the merchant follows all necessary steps, including getting an approva via the terminal then they get paid.
That’s wrong though…while a lot of scams do rely on greed, a whole lot of them -I’d even say most of them- don’t.
I think more commonly they play into fear…fear that your child is being held prisoner by a gang member whose car he hit, fear that you are going to be arrested for missing jury duty, fear that your intimate photos are going to be made public, fear that criminals are using your identity, fear that your bank account will be frozen.
Some scammer do promise money, but I think it’s harsh to accuse the long time job seeker that thinks he just got a well-paying remote job or the small caterer that thinks they just got a nice order of falling for the scams because of dishonesty or even greed …they were just a little gullible…and some of the new AI versions of these scams are really slick and convincing.
On the other hand, some of the crypto scams are so dishonesty driven that it’s hard to feel sorry for the victims, like the one where the victim gets a misdirected e-mail containing the keys to a high balance crypto account…then gets scammed for fees and taxes when they try to steal the funds.
But most of them really don’t, and honest people get scammed all the time.
Yes - I wish the compassion and nuance expressed in your post were more common attributes these days!
I will always be haunted by a scam victim I met while helping out at a soup kitchen which was mostly staffed by down-on-their luck individuals who were both helping to feed people in need, and themselves vulnerable.
I got to talking with one such individual, who was so innocent and sweetly naive. Someone told him I was a writer and he excitedly showed me a letter he had gotten after submitting a poem to a “poetry contest” he found in the back of a magazine somewhere (this was pre-Internet).
The letter said that his poem had won the prestigious Scammy McScamface Award for New Poets, and the publishing company behind the letter wanted to feature his poem in an anthology of modern poetry they were preparing … but they needed a contribution from each poet being published in order to finance the book. So, if he wanted his poem, and acknowledgment of the award, to be included, he needed to send them money (which he already had).
Poor guy. He was SO PROUD. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he had been scammed.
But, but, but ..he can say “I’m published” with authority.
That’s really sad for him though.
Isn’t that the way? Good guy finishes last. Mild mannered is sweet but step out into the crowd and you will be trampled. Meek will inherit the earth by eating dirt when they are ground down into it
Damn I just depressed myself.
(“I’m Dorothy, the small and meek”)
It’s the same scam as those “Who’s Who” books or star registries. The book is probably real but nobody cares about who or what is in it other than the people who paid for it.
The scam is the lie about the importance or prestige for being included.