Credit Card Fraud

NyQuil, or its generic equivalent, is really a wonderful thing. I took a good large dose about 9:30 last night, stayed up to watch the last 45 minutes or so of Frida, which was excellent, and then passed out. I think Karen's getting this ick cold/bronchial thing, which sucks a lot.

I got up this morning and there was a message on my phone from 1-800-454-9078, claiming to be Chase Fraud Protection. The robotic voice instructed me to call the number to verify some recent activity. I paid that card off in December and haven't touched it since, so I called back immediately and it asked me to input my full account number.

I work for an ISP, and I'm keenly aware of the growing sophistication of hackers and phishers, so while the odds were good that this particular call about my particular branded credit card was real, I couldn't bring myself to type in the entirety of my credit card number simply on the strength of one robo call.

I hung up and called the number on the card instead, went through the verification process, and sure enough, yesterday--while I was on the couch watching the readout on my digital thermometer rise--someone, somewhere, tried to run up $439 in charges, largely at "grocery stores and supermarkets".

Let me go back to "I paid that card off in December". As in, I'm done with it. As in, oh no you didn't.

Anyway, good on Chase for calling me about the charges, which I might not have noticed for a couple of weeks otherwise. They seem to have a pretty streamlined process for fraud detection, which in this one instance has saved me hundreds of dollars and possibly years of headaches with the credit bureaus.

My brother's bank-issued debit card number was similarly ripped off somehow right before Christmas, and he was on the phone with the bank while watching his account online as someone purchased Eurorail tickets. What a tiny little world we've become, where an Alabama-issued debit card can be fraudulently used to purchase train tickets in Italy while the owner watches on his laptop, and a mechanical voice on a cell phone at 6am can first cause concern and then comfort.