Posted on 09/25/2025 7:46:35 PM PDT by exDemMom
Well, I feel obliged to post this here because I have now been the victim of fraud three (possibly four) times in the last month.
The first and second incidents took place in Dallas at the end of August. I did not know until I looked at my bank statement that my debit card had been used at a Dallas area restaurant. My husband's debit card had been used at a different Dallas area restaurant. We live in San Antonio, so it's not like we were in the Dallas area and forgot that we stopped for bites to eat. My husband has never used his debit card, and I only use mine at grocery stores. Our bank refunded the fraudulent charges and issued us new debit cards.
The third incident of fraud involves someone trying to use my phone number to sign up for California LifeLine four days ago. I had never heard of this entity, but when I looked it up, I found that it is a CA state program to supply phone service to people who can't afford it. I found out about this because I received one of those access codes that you get whenever you try to sign in to an account. I sent an email to report the fraud, but they told me I have to call to discuss the issue. I will call tomorrow.
The fourth and last incident happened tonight. For some reason, I was looking at my email trash and saw two emails from Walmart there. They never came into the inbox, but went directly to trash. Apparently, I had ordered something, and then Walmart cancelled the order within a minute. This is strange, as I have not ordered from Walmart in over a year. So I went to open up my Walmart account and could not because my password was wrong. Then I used the change password option and was able to get into the account. It showed five street addresses that are not mine. It showed the last four digits of a phone number that is not mine. I immediately contacted Walmart and talked to their representative in India, who closed the account for me and gave me a lot of advice on avoiding fraud. I told him that I do all that, but somehow still was the victim of fraud. He said that I should be able to open a new account with the same email address and correct phone number.
A few months ago, I received notice through my antivirus program that my email is out on the dark web. I checked and found that there were hundreds of unsuccessful attempts to access my email. Maybe that's related?
Thank you for that suggestion.
I try to be careful of skimmers, but I see news reports of things the hackers have done to defraud people that don’t involve skimmers. I saw a report on hackers who put a barrier in ATM machines to prevent the money from coming out when someone uses their debit card for cash. Then the hackers stop by later and pull out the barrier to get the money.
“I carry very little cash.”
I carry a lot of cash because I hate using CCs. Am paranoid and believe that each time a card is used it opens us up as targets. We do use cards, but ot for everything.
"freeze all three of your credit reports so no one can open accounts using your identity"
Burned once with that...never again.
The Norton antivirus password manager will not allow me to copy/paste the password. I have to type it in each time. If a keylogger could access my computer, they'd be able to get all of my passwords through Norton.
I do have my spreadsheet password protected. And my computer is PIN protected. No one but me uses the computer. But I do worry about the cloud storage.
It seems we need a decent amount of paranoia even to survive these days!
Moi aussi, je suis Charlie Kirk. RIP Charlie.
I personally hate Norton and McAfee.
I use KeePass.
It’s free and open source. It allows you to copy-and-paste the website URL, the username and the password so no keystrokes are involved going to any website.
Whenever I can, I wave my iPhone at the pay terminal. Not all stores allow that. I’m worried about a skimmer if I insert my chip card into the reader, too. I have a couple of credit cards and my debit card in Apple wallet.
My debit card *could* have been skimmed, but not my husband’s. He had never used his debit card, not even once. Someone was still able to hack it.
Thanks for the password identification link. That’s a really good idea.
On a side note, sometimes I find a password written on a note. I always wonder how criminals would be able to use the password, since I never remember why I wrote it there or what the password was for.
I have the debit cards for both my banks set to send me an email for any charge over 1$. My phone is set to give me a special notification tone when a charge comes through.
I also use Privacy.com virtual cards for all recurring charges like insurance, subscriptions, etc.
KeePass will also generate extremely secure passwords for you, making it easy to change all your passwords periodically, which is recommended practice because eventually your email and password will show up on a hacking site.
I write my pins on my cards in binary with randomized 4 bit padding at each end of the bit stream. It helps me keep my binary reading skills fresh.
I’d get out of San Antonio.
I always use 9 digit pin #s and I memorize them, I never write them down. I happen to be pretty good at keeping numbers in my head, I always have been like it’s a gift or something.
That sounds like good advice, but I don’t understand how using the tap to pay is more secure than using a pin.
My husband’s debit card was definitely not skimmed or anything, since he had never used it, but someone was still able to use it at a restaurant near Dallas. I don’t know how that could have happened, since they would not have had his PIN.
When I use a PIN, I try to hide my fingers and tap on other numbers in addition to my PIN numbers, just in case someone is watching to see my PIN. Our local grocery store doesn’t have the tap to pay, or I would use it.
That definitely sounds like someone hacked your gmail account!
I made a Protonmail account for business purposes. So far, my Protonmail seems safe. I can’t say the same for gmail or at&t mail.
I don’t know how someone got into my Walmart account with my email, but I will certainly change my email password now.
Lol!
We love San Antonio. I’m originally from California, and I spent most of my adult life in Maryland. San Antonio (or, to be more specific, a small town in the suburbs) is a great improvement!
This has happened to me a few times.
Tap to pay is almost everywhere these days, if they’re not at POS’s near you it soon will be. The benefit being you don’t need to enter your pin # to make purchases. If you don’t enter a pin then no one can get your number. It uses the secure chip on your card which is almost impossible for someone to duplicate on a bogus card. Keeping your card safe from theft. I don’t know about your husbands card or what happened there, but it sounds like it could have been an inside job. Do you have a relative or someone who may have got a hold of his card and used it? That happened to my mom once. It turned out to be one of her grandsons who skimmed the card and made some purchases on it. One of my brother’s kids. He had a drug problem so I guess he was desperate for money.
Wow, I really need to write all of these good ideas down. I like Norton, but it keeps getting more expensive. It’s getting a bit late to do any of these things now, but it looks like I will have a busy day tomorrow to thwart future hackers.
Je suis aussi Charlie Kirk. RIP Charlie.
“Don’t use a debit card for purchases;”
I was in my bank for a rare visit and the teller noticed I had a high balance while money passing through and heading somewhere else. She said, Don’t use your debit card while you have that high balance. I said, “THAT’S why I don’t have a debit card.
I have never missed not having one.
I don’t hand the debit card over.
Several years ago, I went to a Best Buy and bought an iPad. Apparently, the salesman kept a record of my credit card, since soon after, someone tried to buy a few thousand dollars worth of Apple products on my card. The card company recognized the charges as fraudulent, so I didn’t have to do anything.
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