Well, one of the biggest frustrations or challenges that I have with the Internet is the security of on-line shopping. Most of the time it’s so much cheaper than what I can find in the stores, not to mention the convenience of clicking and shipping! But with that, comes a bank account number that has to be blindly sent through Cyberspace. And on more than one occasion (it’s only been twice, but still that counts as more than one), my bank card number has been stolen.
The first time it was stolen was in connection with E-Bay and Pay-Pal. I was new to the sites and I had just set-up my Pay-Pal Account when I got an e-mail requesting verification of my card number. I know now that I should have been suspicious, but I wasn’t and so off it went to be “verified.” Well, in reality what had just happened was that thieves had taken control of my account. The address on this fake request was something like www.paypal1.com. I can’t remember exactly, but it was something very sneaky like the 1 at the end of the address that tips you off…I know now to look more closely. Which by the way, has come in handy on more than one occasion since then!
Anyway, the thieves proceeded to charge up thousands of dollars in the matter of a few days, until one day the bank called me at home and asked if I was traveling oversees (apparently that’s where these charges were originating from), which was out of my norm so that’s why they had flagged it. Of course, I wasn’t (remember they called me at home) and so they shut down the card immediately and I wasn’t responsible for the charges…end of story! No, not exactly. What ended up happening is they moved those charges over into another account with my name and SSN attached as a holding place while they investigated (but no body did). And since it wasn’t a fully set-up account, I wasn’t getting statements (I thought the charges had all be reversed), but what was happening was that they (the bank) was reporting me delinquent to the credit bureau. Three months later, I get a call from a debt collector asking when I was planning on paying this bill….hello, what bill?!? I hadn’t used that card since the “incident”. In fact, I shut down the whole E-Bay, Pay-Pal account and decided it wasn’t for me.
Long story short, it was almost a full year later that I got the credit bureau corrected and the cards BOTH canceled. Not to mention the countless hours of my time dealing with it via phone, e-mail and eventually letters.
The second time was not all that long ago, and if anyone else buys their books from the OSU bookstore they’ll know what I am talking about. This time though, I had called in my order and given them my credit card number over the phone, which was input into a database that was latter hacked into and stolen. Again, charges were made and the credit card company called me and the card was shut down….it’s still to early to tell though if I will repeat the whole debt collector scenario.
As a side note though, OSU did sent out a blanket e-mail warning me of this potential breach, which was caught by my spam filter and deposited into the trash (I still don’t know why since other OSU e-mails are not), but anyway, it was almost two full weeks after my credit card company had contacted me about the suspicious charges when they did this…way to late!
I guess the moral of the story is, expect these things to happen if you’re going to shop on-line or over the phone…or maybe it’s just my luck?! No, I really do think this is more common that people think or know about and it’s sad because again, something that was designed to help up out and save us time, ends up costing us more of both in the long run.
Wood and Smith’s reading’s this week focused on Internet hate sites saying that, “this is the dark side of the Internet (pg. 191).” Well, I would say that the thieves that steal credit card numbers should be included in that “dark side” group and the frustrating part about it is that you don’t even know they are out there, watching you. At least on the street if someone steals your wallet, you have the chance of seeing them do it.
3 Comments
I know how you feel. I have had my account comprimised twice. The first was via an online purchase that I made and the second was via the OSU bookstore. You put your trust in these companies to secure your information but there are always those bad apples. Luckly My bank shut my account almost immediatly.Unfortuntly I was in the process of paying for my morning coffee when they shut it down. It was embarrasing. Sometimes I think technology is more of a hinerance than a convience. You also have to watch out when you run your debit card as a credit. the machine at my wifes work prints your entire card number on the recipt and they have to print it twice, so you never know who has your number
Wow! All I can say is me too. I have been hacked twice this year and all of my card info was stolen. It seems like the internet technology just keeps expanding and we cannot keep up with our every growing need for personal security over our identities and our lives. I just watched that movie Untraceable…that was pretty freaky. Now that your information has been compromised do you feel more prepared to secure your information or do you feel as though it is never “fully” secured?
Wow, this is the third blog I’ve read where someone got ripped off by the OSU thing. I can’t believe so many people were affected by that, including myself. Great post and thanks for shaing your frustrating experiences. -sam paul