So my credit card was compromised. After a conversation with the fraud department, the card’s been cancelled, new one issued, the bad charges reversed, etc. Everything’s cool. Looks like whoever did it got some Wendy’s burgers and some gas before I saw the email alert and got everything taken care of.
Anyway, there were two odd charges among the fraudulent ones. Two charges to Sears, Roebuck, & Co., each for a single dollar. I find it unlikely that these are actual purchases. Anybody have any idea what that might have been about? Maybe pinging a Web site in some way to verify that they had a working card?
I was told that gas stations will charge $1 on a charge card before filling up your car with gas. Then they know the card is good and can go ahead and fill the car with gas, then charge for the gas and credit the $1 pre-charge.
Search google.com for the following…
$1 gas charge
…and there will be some info on those $1 charges. As for why Sears would do that??? Do they have a gas station? And maybe that charge was made to validate the card, then the card cancelled before they could credit the $1?
I’d say they were pings to check if the card was good.
However, I am finding trouble reconciling “my card was compromised” and purchases of some gas and burgers. To me “compromised” means a theft ring got ahold of the numbers and was working up the ladder to expensive, resellable purchases using electronic-only validation. To buy gas and boigahs means they had to have a physical card, real or cloned.
So is your “compromise” == lost the damn thing?
Nope! The card was (and still is) in my wallet. It’s the only legit copy that exists as far as I am aware. It must have been a cloned card.
Were the $1 charges “pending” charges or actual final charges? They could have been trying to add the card to their profile on the sears.com web site. Web sites often do a $1 authorization to validate the credit card but then never submit the charge.
There could be a couple of explanations for the charges: a kid found the credit card (real or cloned) on the street and decided to get some free burgers. Or a more sophisticated thief was trying to establish a series of purchases that would fool the fraud-detection algorithms. Suddenly buying a thousand dollars worth of electronics on the other side of the country would trip fraud detection. But casually buying some gas and burgers makes it look more like you just drove into town and are doing some everyday spending. After establishing that, then they move in for the kill.
Ah, that makes sense. Yes, they were still under the pending charges.