I’ve always been very vigilant about watching the transactions that appear on my credit card, which is even easier to do when you can view them online via internet banking before they disappear off to your paper statement copy. Fortunately the fraud department at my business bank is just as vigilant, stopping a transaction from Cebu Air and notifying me about it. We played safe and cancelled the card, which saw me issued with a new number. And wouldn’t you know it, a week later the second card (different number, same linked account) of my husband’s also was subjected to a declined Cebu Air transaction. Yup – cancelled and reordered his too.
If this has ever happened to you, you may have also gone into a spin about where you have used your card and how someone else has obtained your details. I’ve been purchasing online safely for the last 10 years, and this is my first attack. I’ve always preached that you should only buy from sites you know and trust, that have secure SSL encypted payment pages (which changes the site address to https:// and gives you a little locked padlock in your browser). So you’d think I’d be pretty careful when it came to that sort of thing. And I am. Very. However, I’m still in a spin about how someone else has obtained my details! And not only mine, but my husband’s too.
Our card numbers are not recorded on any of our inhouse computer systems (which I’m pretty sure are secure but how sure can you be)?
I did feel somewhat better when the bank advised that the credit card company has issued an ‘all points bulletin’ for a range of card numbers that had been ‘compromised’ – ours included. Did this mean that I had not foolishly and willingly handed over my details to someone dodgy, but was the victim of a systems failure or a syndicate of cyber-criminals far more geeky than myself?
Hmm. OK. Don’t feel better anymore … how the heck did they get my details???
All credit (pun intended) to the bank and their fraud dept for providing a fantastic service to protect my accounts. If the transactgions had gone through and I had disputed them, I still would not have been liable, with the bank wearing the cost and refunding my card. Consumer protection is an awesome thing, completely underrated under you happen to need it.
Oh, and if you pay us by credit card, never fear – we enter your details directly into our bank processing terminal then destroy the piece of paper on which they were written. By shredding .. or fire .. or by eating them a la Maxwell Smart .. or by numerous other ways which we cannot divulge 🙂
-SCuff