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In lugnet.color, David Simmons wrote:
>
> "Purple Dave" <purpledave@maskofdestiny.com> wrote in message
> news:Hy3F2y.vE6@lugnet.com...
> > In lugnet.color, David Simmons wrote:
> > > Now I'm no net ranger, and I've deleted a lot of obvious fakes, but this one
> > > was subtle and managed to silence that little voice in the back of my head.
> >
> > The simplest way around stuff like this is to always do it by phone, and only
> > using numbers that you get from the phone book. It's a lot easier to fake an
> > e-mail address than it is to have a fake phone number set up in the white pages,
> > and any info that they (the companies that actually hold your accounts) can take
> > by e-mail they should also be able to take by phone.
> >
> > > I found out later that it was fake, and cancelled my old card and had a new
> > > one sent, telling them (my bank, BofA) exactly why I was doing this. They
> > > managed to circumvent that anyway.
> >
> > I very much doubt that it's the card that they were after. It's your account
> > number. Once they have that, they don't need your card. They can just do
> > check-by-phone, submit fake electronic checks, or just do basic wire-transfers,
> > and the only benefit you'll get out of cancelling your old card is that you'll
> > have a shiny new piece of plastic in your pocket.
>
> Yep, that's exactly what happened. I was mainly pissed because I'd called
> to get a new card specifically telling them why, but I guess it should come
> as no surprise that Customer Service is a contradiction in terms. They
> could've told me that replacing the card wasn't going to solve the potential
> problem!
>
> Oh well, live and learn!
>
> Dave
My wife was the victim of such a crime. In her case, she had an ATM card with a
credit card logo on it, allowing her to use her cash card anywhere that VISA was
accepted. She used the card at a local place of business, and a dishonest clerk
apparently took down all of the information necessary to use her card online.
She was lucky- one of the first fraudulent purchases was for a $600 car stereo
for a make of car she did not have. Lucky because the order was placed at an
auto dealership which had once serviced her car, and with an alert salesperson
who noticed the anomaly and called her to verify the order. Over the course of
the next few weeks, thousands of dollars worth of bogus transfers were made
using her card number.
The sad part is what happened when she immediately went to the bank and the
police. First, she contacted the bank to cancel the card and file a claim, then
spent quite a bit of time with a police detective helping to unravel the case.
She even figured out where she had used the card, helped to identify a suspect
and found his home address, providing this information to the police. Despite
all of this, the detective told her that there was almost nothing he could do
unless they could catch the thief knowingly accepting delivery of stolen goods.
Nearly five years later, there has still been no arrest in the case.
Meanwhile, the bank had "cancelled" her card and issued a new one that was
identical! So new charges were still billed through and deducted from her
checking account. The bank told her that she had to monitor her bank balance to
detect unexpected withdrawals, then come to the bank in person to sign an
affidavit for each instance of fraud. On several occasions, they misplaced her
affidavits, forcing her to make repeat trips to the bank to file new ones. Even
in the best case, she would be without her money for several days while they
processed her claims. They told her that the only way to stop the fraud was to
close the account, and by the way, it'll cost $50 to open a new account. (I
told her she should open her new account somewhere else, but she used that as
leverage to get the bank to waive the service charge.)
Needless to say, I do not recommend using debit cards anywhere except for a
trusted ATM location.
One other anecdote- I was on the phone with a friend last Sunday morning when he
opened up an e-mail allegedly from PayPal telling him that his account had been
de-activated. He's usually pretty shrewd about this kind of thing, and I'm on
the other end of the line telling him that it sounds like a scam, and he *still*
went ahead and entered his user ID and password into a bogs web form. He
realized his mistake almost immediately and changed his password, but it just
goes to show you how good some of these scammers are getting.
- Chris.
p.s. FUT lugnet.market.shopping
p.p.s. I've been through it all and I still think the color change was a Bad
Thing.
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