Concern

Today I had to call my bank and cancel my credit card. It looks like there were fraud attempts, and it seems the only response to that is to go nuclear: wipe out the account.

Long story short, I tried ordering a new power adapter for my laptop, since the one I have is starting to flake out on me — if the cord is held in the wrong position, no power goes to the laptop. I’m not a hardware engineer, but yeah, that’s not good. I was alerted that the charge for this order could not go through, and I’m at my parent’s house this weekend, so I couldn’t get any verification calls directly.

The charges were from something called “Scholastic at Home,” and you don’t have to search for very long to find out that this is a clear source of a lot of fraud, going on for at least two years now. The changes were small, and I found references to “test charges,” which are small charges that test if the charges get challenged or not.

You should pay attention to charges on your credit card. If something looks unfamiliar, do a web search for the company. You might hit on something like this, which seems to be a shotgun-style fraud attempt. Someone got a million credit card numbers, and is trying them out to see if any can be used. It’s likely profitable even if you need to deal with some percentage of people alert enough to stop it.

Credit cards seem to be an increasingly disposable thing. Security is still hard to get right, we use cards in more and more places, and people still make lots of money by exploiting them. They’re convenient, but risky to use, so you’ll need to destroy them regularly. Never use anything tied directly to your bank account. Your credit card is a virtual buffer for money you currently have. I’ve personally just regarded credit cards as only this: a buffer, which is more convenient to use than cash. I never let debt sit on my card.