Log：Credit Card Fraud

Got an unexpected wakeup call today.  It’s from my credit card company.  Someone made a charged on my card this morning around 5 o’clock.  After confirming it’s not from me, the credit card company immediately cancelled the card.  I’m told I’ll get a new card in a few days, plus some paperwork to verify if there were other fraud charges.

We all read about credit fraud before, but this is the first time it hits me.  It’s hard to figure out how the credit card information was stolen.  Criminals are always coming up with new scams.  In Michael Connelly’s “Lincoln Lawyer”, there was this con-artist set up a charity website to collect donation after the Indian Ocean Tsunami.  He did transfer all the donations to the Red Cross.  The way he profited from the whole thing was by selling off the donors’ credit card information in the black market.

Over the years, credit card companies have suffered hug losses to credit card fraud.  As one of the ways to fight back, they developed sophisticated computer software to monitor all the transactions.  When the charge appears to be out of a custom’s regular usage pattern (I guess, in my case, that would be charging in 5 am), they’ll contact the customer immediately.

Just in case that fails to catch the problem, carefully reviewing monthly credit card statement would be our best contributions to help this constant fight.