Re – Card Theft
We went to the bank today.
We found out that we were among the victims of a card skimming ring.
Our card had been skimmed locally but used in Quebec…..which is about 5,000 km. from our city. So there was no problem with the bank believing the transactions were not ours. There is no way we could have physically been shopping in Quebec yesterday and home by evening to receive the bank phone call.
Some employee in a legitimate business skimmed our card during a transaction. They also had a way to get our pin number – either by using a pin hole camera or by having an altered pad that imprinted our pin numbers into the pad as we punched them.
Then all they had to do was make a duplicate of our card and Voila! They were good to go!!
We learned that it was Vic’s card that was the compromised one – and he is the one of us that is almost paranoid about being careful!
I guess we will be even more careful in the future. There is not much we can do if a place of business has an altered pad but we can be careful never to let our cards out of our sight. We will no longer even allow a salesclerk to keep the card on her cash register or on the counter while we punch in our pin number – those few seconds are enough for them to either write down our card number or swipe it with a small hand held strip reader!
Yes, eventually we will get our stolen money back. And we did not have to change our account number. We just had to turn in our old cards and new ones were issued.
We did change our pins numbers though, just to be safe!
We are so thankful the thieves were caught the first day they used the fraudulent copy of our card and that the bank was so helpful in making sure we were not inconvenienced more than we were!
And if our experience makes you more cautious with your cards then I am thankful if my warning helped prevent your card from being skimmed !
3 comments:
Isn't amazing to think the bank can keep track of so many credit cards and notice when one is amiss?
The business of God noticing the number of hairs on our head doesn't seem like quite the stretch that seemed to me to be when I was a child. Angel watching over us, and computers keeping track of us. Except the angels don't get hijacked for evil use.
Glad it all turned out well.
I totally agree, Jill! I have thought the same thing...living in the computer age has made the omniscience of God so much easier to understand!!
WOW!!! That is pretty scary Julie. Thanks for the lesson!!! I wonder if the self-checkouts that some stores have now are safer or if skimmers would still exist there or not?? It bugs me when the Cashier holds on to my card and doesn't give it back right away! And you know, I was thinking if you are aware of the people around you and watch the Cashier closely is skimming more or less likely to happen I wonder? The thing I don't like is the pin pads of debit machines that record your pin, and save your card number, because there is really nothing you can do with that, right? Except to keep an eye on your bank statement, I suppose. Wow, I sure am glad the bank was on their toes and caught it before it got too out of hand. Beautiful !!!
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