Careful when shopping on the net!

Hey guys, I was just cruising through the secret Santa thread and Flooze came up. Make sure and check all transactions on your statments when using a credit card on the internet. We got a call from our bank last week. It seems that a site we had used the credit card on had been hacked. It was a secure server too. The person who hacked the site got into all the account info. All the banks were contacted and everyone who had used a card on that site had to cancell their cards. As safe as it seems, there's always just that one chance.

Thanks for the warning Sandie. I have heard of things like this happening. I hope all is okay with your situation!!

I know that the threat of credit card fraud is always present when ordering online. I order stuff online somewhat frequently and so far (knock on wood) it's been pretty uneventful. I do look at my statements very closely. Once I noticed a charge that wasn't mine. I called up & my credit card company immediatly got rid of it and refunded the money to me. Mastercard has a policy about always re-imbersing web charges that you challenge.

I order from half.com quite a bit. I have ordered from Amazon.com several times.


In my line of work I send my clients baskets for birthdays/congratulations/weddings,etc. and I do alot of that stuff online. I've never had a problem with my American Express card.

Maybe I've just been extremely lucky

A freind of mine told me the other night that his credit card info had been stolen from the net, too. The bank called him and warned him that somebody had been using his card.

Wow....that is scary! I don't normally order anything online, but of course, as luck would have it, I have just used my credit card to purchase three CD's online recently. I am a bit worried now. it said it was secure, but obviously that doesn't mean much.
I hope it turns out okay. I will check my statement closely.
Thanks for the warning!

I use my credit card online all the time and so far never had a problem. I know that Visa and Mastercard in Israel insure all online transactions just like regular ones, so they pay you if you challenge a payment. That hasn't happened to me yet.

I really don't see how shopping on the net is less safe than shopping on the phone, or even just using your card in a regular shop. Whenever you give your details on the phone, you trust that person not to abuse the information and the same is true in any shop really. Frauds are just as common in offline business as online. In fact, when you buy on the phone, your details are almost always put into a database that is probably less secure than online ones. If there's another computer on the same network that goes online, hackers can get in quite easily.

So, I really find no reason not to shop online. I know so many people who were victims of offline credit card fraud... They are all very wary of using their cards online and still they've been hit. I use my credit card online all the time (an average of 5-6 transactions a month) and have been doing so for at least a year and a half with no problem.

Originally posted by Anne
I really don't see how shopping on the net is less safe than shopping on the phone, or even just using your card in a regular shop.

Click to expand...

I buy a lot of stuff online and never had a problem.

But do you know that even if you never buy anything anywhere with your credit card, you can still have problems. There are softwares that generate real numbers for Credit Cards (meaning numbers that obey to the algorithms behind all credit card numbers). The crooks only have to generate a number (it will obey the algorithm) and buy whatever they want with that number. And maybe that number will correspond to the Credit card Number of someone. And that someone will get ripped although he never went online, or never used his Credit Card. In fact I have heard that there are a lot more frauds that way then by hacking in Credit Cards databases... So you see nobody is safe...

I don't want to scare anyone... just to inform!

Anne-Claire

Just so ya'll know...

I purchase stuff online all the time, and this was the first time it's every happenned.. mind you, NOTHING was charged on my card, but if it had been my bank has an online purchase protection so I would not have been liable for the charges. These days the bank or any bank for that matter has the ability to find out where the point of sale occured even if it was on the net. I look at it this way, the system worked the way it's suppose to and I was notified B4 anything happenned. I still think it is just as safe, if not safer to shop online that at a store.


Ken