Stolen Debit Card

[Cristos]

While traveling DEMAND that all communications from any Fraud Department to you be via email or telephone. Otherwise they *will* mail time-sensitive documents to your home or PO Box AT YOUR Unhappy EXPENSE.

[Donati]

My wife was in banking nearly 20 years. We experienced the same thing unfortunately. She suggested we open an account that generally has zero balance. We move whatever amount we need to make our purchases at the moment. This way any theft of the card information, will lead them to an account with zero balance

[cvretis]

We always have two banks for debit and credit cards. If one get's hacked, we can still get to some money.

A few years ago my bank called my cell and questioned a charge. I was at the RV storage and said I could check with the wife when I got home. They offered to call me in 30 minutes. When they called again, they asked a lot of questions before freezing the accounts.

I called back the next morning to follow up and the bank knew nothing about this. Turns out they spoofed the number to look like the bank when they called my cell phone. The questions they were asking me were the same ones the real bank was asking the guys doing the fraud. I was actually giving them the answers to get 10K out in under 30 minutes.

Never trust the caller ID. You must call the number on the back of your card.

[Alschief]

I’ll add one bad experience I had with PayPal. One Sunday evening I heard our PC do a ding. A few minutes later I received a second notice. Got up and I had two separate $27.50 charges for downloadable games from a company called game stop. I immediately tried to contact PayPal. I had to wait for the transaction to be moved from a temporary status. Filed a complaint with Pay pal no joy. The money was debited from my checking account. They said I made the charges. I called game Stop. The employee said he had heard of this occurring. Recommended I contact local Sheriff which I did no interest in Perusing. I was out the funds. Lesson learned never use a bank account for primary funding.

[hhansen054]

I have had both my Debit and Credit cards compromised in the past. Luckily my credit union caught the debit transactions minutes after it happened because they figured I couldn't be in washington and Texas at the same time. Now I only use my debit card to withdraw the grocery money (the wife likes to use cash only for groceries). For everything else I use a cash back Credit card and have alerts set on it. I was recently compromised and discovered I did not have the alerts set low enough. I did not catch the $1-$2 transactions to verify the card. That is now going to change. I also carry all my cards in an RFID wallet.
Since the police are powerless to catch these thieves it is up to you to protect yourselves.
Good luck.

[Mitchone]

We got hit a few years ago. Luckily our bank, USAA, took charge of everything and reimbursed all lost monies to our account.


Since then, we've started using something called Privacy.com. For each bill we make a virtual credit card with a set amount which can be one-time, monthly, annual or based on an amount, or both. The virtual debit card can only be used for one vendor which removes the chance of it being hijacked.



Funds are withdrawn directly from your bank whenever a purchase is made, this is not tied to a credit card, it's like getting a dedicated debit card for each purchase to a company. If something does happen we close the card and open a new one. If we can't cancel a subscription we just close or suspend the debit card associated to it. We probably have at least 30 of these debit cards. It works brilliantly with subscriptions, too. Netflix, Apple, everything is paid through privacy.com.



Since we've had Privacy only once we saw a mysterious $2 attempt but it was denied saying that only one vendor/company can use the virtual debit card.



Our day to day stuff is all cash. A Dave Ramsay thing. But the Privacy.com thing is absolutely brilliant and we love it.


Something to think about,


Mitch

[tetranz]

Originally Posted by cvretis

Never trust the caller ID. You must call the number on the back of your card.

Very true. Caller ID is not secure. I think with the right VOIP software, a scammer can call "from" whatever number they want.

I think there is something similar to caller ID which is secure when a call is received on a toll free number. That's why banks etc sometimes tell you to call an 800 number from your home phone to activate a new credit card etc.

[Johnynorthla]

I always try and use a pump facing the window of the gas station store. Thief’s are less likely to put a scanner on them for fear of being caught. I also check the seals on the pumps and I avoid questionable stations. Luckily my accountant wife is on top of our billing accounts daily, she’s caught many many stolen cards/numbers of ours in the past! She questions every odd charge!

I would suggest you get identity protection, my brother had his identity stolen twice!


Hard to believe they got all your information the way they did but in this digital age we live in makes it too easy for these crafty thieves!


Sort this happened to you, be safe and be careful!

[SailorSam]

I haven't read all 5 pages of posts, so... We have gotten hit in a different manner. We have one of the "cash back" cards. Fraud was to withdraw our cash back money. We've gotten hit twice this year on this! No idea how the fraudster managed to get our new cc number in under 3 months! Now, I'm redeeming the cashback as soon as it is posted to my account.

[natgild1]

When my bank sent me the combined credit/debit card, I sent it back and requested a regular debit card. If someone gets ahold of a regular debit card, they can't do anything without the PIN. If some one gets ahold of my credit card, it does not come out of my checking account. I have heard stories about people using a combined card and the perpetrator drains their checking account. Then the victim writes a bunch of hot checks and they get hit with all the overdraft charges too.

I would recommend returning combined card for a pure debit card. If you need a credit card, get a regular credit card.

[Rossi6998]

Originally Posted by Earl II

I have had almost the same problem and I tend to never use the debit card anymore. I use a credit card instead. If there is a fraudulent use, it doesn't come right out of my checking account. The whole thing sucks.

Exactly... I only use my debit card for cash withdrawals at the bank's ATM. Credit cards are much easier to question charges without the fear of your bank account balance depleting.

[Shell Man]

Originally Posted by Souljourner

Hi!
I realize this isn't RV related, but since most of us carry credit/debit cards I thought I would share of my experience. Plus - I have several questions and was hoping that someone more learned than me may have the answers.

I was shocked and horrified yesterday morning when I logged onto my financial institution account page only to notice that thousands of dollars was missing from the checking account linked to my debit card, and that my balance was zero.

Quickly scrolling through the charges, I saw that overnight about a dozen charges were made, the first 3 for small amounts (Less than $2.00) to an obscure business whose name consisted of nonsense letter and numbers. I guess that was the "fishing" charge. That was followed with an almost $700 payment to a car financing company, and the rest were charges to a big box store. About $1300 had cleared, several were cancelled, and the rest were pending and in various stages of clearing, but the funds had been removed from my account.

I immediately called my financial institution, and they cancelled my card and voided all of the pending transactions save for two more that were further along in the processing chain. Thankfully, all of the funds for the fraudulent charges are going to be returned to me, something I wasn't expecting with a debit card. The end result is that financially I'm going to be fine.

But the question I'm left with is - how did they get my debit card information in the first place, when I still have possession of my card? I looked at charges I made with it over the past month, and except for a full service gas station, all of the times I used the card I swiped it myself at a terminal, or used it for an online transaction.

The customer service person I spoke with said that crooks take a picture of your card, and then have all the information they need to make online purchases. So my next question is - yes, but....... when I tried to duplicate an online transaction at the same big box store, after inputting account number, security code (yeah, right!), and expiration date, they then asked me for my billing address before continuing. So that's my next question - even if they got the first information from my card - how did they get my billing address? That part really concerns me.

And my third question is - if it's so easy for someone to take down your card info while processing a transaction, such as a wait person in a restaurant (one of the few times I ever physically give up my card) - why is ALL the information needed to complete a credit or debit card purchase printed right on the card? Seems like the security code should be printed elsewhere. I guess that one's a rhetorical question.

And the most important question of all - besides changing my password at my financial institution and cancelling my card, is there anything else I need to do or be aware of to protect myself in the future? Or for anyone else to protect themselves in the future?

Even though not directly RV related (This is the Just Conversation thread, BTW) I thought this was a common enough occurrence (unfortunately) impacting fellow RVers that I thought it was worth posting of my experience.

Thoughts?

PS The charge made to the auto finance company - can't they track whose account the payment was made to and catch the crook?

We have NEVER had a debit card and never will. You can check with many banks and they will confirm that debit cards are stolen or fraudulently used often.

[Genevatexan]

I've been out of the credit card support business for some years, so chip cards are not in my wheelhouse. That said, we did learn that mag Stripe encoders are available on the black market and if you can get the correct data via theft, bad actors can simply encode blank card stock with a mag stipe encoder and the face of the card is irrelevant. it can be a blank card with no embossing but it reads just the same. Thus, you still have your card, but they do too....

[Sharon455]

Originally Posted by Bizcrate

WOW - LOTS and lots of reaction on this one! ...

So what do you do in the future so this never, ever happens to you again?
Well, unfortunately there are no guarantees in life that bad things won't happen.
Carry the cash you normally feel comfortable with - but not to the point of foolish. If tracking your expenses through a checking account with a debit card is your preference, then fine. Consider keeping a minimal base amount in your checking while you travel, moving funds over from a savings periodically and as needed. Set a couple low balance text alerts to remind you to make the funds sweep when needed. In this case, you want to disable any automatic low balance funds sweep from savings to checking. If there are a bunch of fraudulent transactions coming in (and they can take a few days for all to arrive even with the card shut off) you do not want to keep automatically bleeding your savings in the process. Alternatively, some banks offer cheap checking accounts depending on your relationship with them. Open a separate one with a debit card just for RV Trippin'. Either way, you are creating a firewall between your accounts so money doesn't just keep running out the door.
In any case, carry a credit card as back up in case of emergencies. It takes a while to resolve theft and fraud incidents. There can be circumstances when it takes a few days before your bank can return your balance to where it was. Many times it can happen within 24 to 48 hours. In the meantime, your credit card will cover you, just as it was meant to do.
I am very sorry that this whole thing happened to you. I'm glad that you did not suffer long term monetary loss and that the shock of the whole thing is fading. In the meantime, you've really helped a lot of us learn so much without having the nasty experience. Thank you for sharing this.

The problem with using your savings as the feeder account is that the feds limit the number of outbound transactions from your savings account per billing period. For USAA, and probably all others that number is six (6). If you cross that limit you may be required to convert your savings to checking. My mortgage is auto drafted from savings so that leaves 5 withdrawals or transfers. Not counting utilities that are scheduled and sent from my checking account I enter at least 50 transactions monthly for groceries, gas, restaurants, and my Amazon shopping habits. I may talk to DH and see how he feels about a second checking account for our day-to-day spending.