Posted on 09/25/2004 8:46:25 AM PDT by John Robertson
What is "net angels," or www.netangel.com?
As a rule, a criminal withdrawal from your credit card account can be reversed if you call the company, and they will take care of going after the perp. But a criminal withdrawal from a debit card or a bank account won't be repaid in the same way. You have to try to collect from the criminal yourself, which is pretty much a losing game.
Debit cards and on-line payments are somewhat dangerous for that reason. A credit card is much safer.
But it certainly won't hurt to try.
Absolutley good advice. NEVER use a debit card online.
What I haven't heard yet is how they got access to the account. A few suggestions:
Kill your debit card. They take money directly out of your bank account unlike a credit card which merely goes against a balance until you pay the balance.
Do not make online transactions using your checking account number. Using a credit card is better, perhaps a special account used only for online purchases as opposed to the one for all your putcheases.
Do not keep your checking account number or credit card number logged into you computer. Spyware can find these nuggets and download them to somebody when you aren't looking. It's okay to access bank accounts online, just don't add in little cookies that store your account number easily. Always check to see that your browser is using encryption when sending any financial information.
Clean out your cache periodically, at least once a week. And use programs like Spybot and AdAware to scrub out tracking cookies and spyware.
My one last security suggestion is to leave off as much ID information as possible from your personal checks. Why volunteer your drivers license, social security number, date of birth, etc. to people who don't need to know? If the clerk needs it, she'll ask for it and I'll give it but I won't just volunteer it by having it pre-printed on the checks. The more you make it easy for people to steal your identitiy, the more you invite it to be stolen.
He said it was netangels.GB, NOT netangels.COM.
I think Steve Gibson is crap.
Ask your bank, maybe they have a phone number for the outfit that charged you and you can call them.
I recently had an experience, where a charge showed up on my credit card, that I didn't make. I called the credit card company, who gave me the phone number of the outfit and suggested that I give them a call, to see what they say. I called them and asked them how they got my credit card number. They told me that apparently, when I purchased something totally unrelated online, (they had the exact merchant and date), I must have clicked on some "take $10 off on your next purchase" coupon out of curiousity, which triggered a "subscription" to this other service, and they promptly charged my card. But when I called them, they did reverse the charges immediately.
It may be worth your while to call them, to find out, if perhaps something similar happened to you, or did someone else use your card, or is the outfit itself engaged in fraudulent charging.
Once you think you have everything in place, go to www.grc.com and run the leak test, the Stealth leak test, and the Sheilds up port scan test.
Personally, I use FireFox to keep all the spy crap off my machine.
If you discover where the leak was please let us know.
Good luck.
This happened to me about 2 years ago, only we were charged almost $5,000.00 over a two day period. It was a company out of Germany (a sound system company), and when we looked at activity on our account for the week prior, we discovered two small amounts, one for a Save the Children's sort of fund also ending in those GB letters (?Great Britain) and another for a PETA like group out of Germany. The bank figured that they had used the account # the first two times (both under $5.00) to verify that it was an active account, but a small enough amount that it went unnoticed by us.
We were reimbursed through our credit unions for the complete amount in the end, but I basically had a wiped out checking account for almost 2 weeks. My bank did hold all checks for us, and didn't "bounce" any while they were investigating, but we did go through the whole nine yards, police reports, etc.
The only complaint I had was that my credit unions "investigation", was only investigating us to make sure we weren't screwing them, and although they had the tracking info on the company that made the charge, they never even tried contacting them. I took it upon myself to look at the internet where I found a company in Germany that seemed to fit, I emailed the owner explaining the whole thing, hoping someone there spoke English. They emailed me back telling me that the people that had ordered the equipment (some sort of sound equipment for recording) had listed my husband and about twelve others as co-owners in the company. It was somewhere in Turkey. Thankfully, I got ahold of the guy before any equipment was sent, and he canceled the order. He re-wired the money back to my account and all was well.
I now watch my account like a hawk. I have also stopped using my check card for internet purchases.
LOL!
Over the past few weeks there have been 4 payments made on checks that are out of sequence (check numbers approximately 300 higher than those I'm currently on). I have the checks charged to the account in my possession, yet PNC paid them. They've been for $300.00 three times and $150.00 the other, for a total of $1050.00. I noticed it when I balanced the account after getting an unexpected NSF charge (actually four NSF's at once, which came to $120.00).
Once in the past there was an unauthorized charge to my account for over $1600.00, also without an actual check, which overdrew my account, and when I asked PNC why they honored a charge that didn't even have an actual check that overdrew my account they said they base it on customer history and because I'd had the account for a long time and was a good customer they thought they were doing me a favor.
I'm considering changing banks. "Favors" like that are too expensive.
You should never use your check card/debit card to buy things over the internet. Use your credit card. This is because there are laws that limit your liability if your credit card is used fraudulently, but there are no such protections for debit cards - leaving you at the mercy of the bank's investigation and their timetable on when (and if) to reimburse your bank account.
Of course, using your debit card at a brick-and-mortar business has the same issue, but there is less electronic exposure.
Your bank will be able to find out exactly where your money went since it was debited from your account. The electronic transaction will tell them the source.
From personal experience, Banks are easier to get your money from than credit cards once you file a police report. The banks can collect their money from FDIC
??????
What's with all this weird talk of firewalls and hacking? They used his debit card.
The only problem is that it is a pain in the A** waiting the time for it to be cleared up. Where you can avoid using a credit card, it's hard to avoid using your checking account.
Maybe I missed something here. How did they get his debit card number?
People's debit card numbers are stored in their computer? Not usually!
They got it the way they usually get it. From an actual transaction, somewhere.
Which post says that John never used his debit card on his computer? That's the post I missed.
I am sure he did use his card to buy stuff on the internet! As most of us have. The danger in that has nothing to do with how secure your personal computer is, it has to do with how secure the databases full of card numbers at the business you buy from are, how trustworthy ~their~ employees are, and how many people know your card number. Your understanding of how credit card fraud takes place is seriously lacking if your first response is to ~mock~ him for using Internet Explorer. Credit Card theft has nothing to do with a firewall or computer hacking, it has to do with someone getting the card number and using it. It probably has nothing to do with fraud on the part of the business named here. Chances are they were snookered too. The teenager at the gas station I went to yesterday has more access to my card number than someone browsing through my computer has.
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