Question - Wife's credit card continually compromised
 

I'm looking for help or ideas here on why this is happening. First a little background;

Wife and I have several credit cards between us. Two of these are joint cards where both she and I have cards on the same account. She has accounts at various online businesses which are paid by her credit card.
The problem; She has her card (let's call it card 'A' on one of the joint accounts) compromised about every two months. Seriously, this has happened five or six times this year. I suspected one of the online business either had someone in the processing department stealing card details, or their database was hacked. After the last round I suggested she bills different things to different cards in an effort to help identify the culprit.
Well, this morning she discovered a different card (card 'B') has been compromised. Fortunately she only used that on one account and doesn't use it for over the counter transactions. Great we thought, we've found the problem. She called the credit card company, stopped the old card and ordered a new one. While online she checked her other accounts and all was well. This was around 10am.

At 2pm this afternoon she gets a notification that her joint card (Card 'A') has been compromised again. This happened between her checking at 10am and 2pm. I would assume if someone steals card numbers they don't use it immediately, so this could be complete coincidence, but what methods exist for BOTH card details to be known?

The most simple answers are, more than one online site has security issues, or cards were compromised in different ways and this is just a coincidence. How else would could someone obtain her card details? I know about skimmers on gas pumps or point-of-sale key pads, so that's a possibility for one of the cards. Someone suggested one of the credit reporting agencies, but surely they'd know account details, but not card numbers?

Any ideas as to how both cards could be used fraudulently both within 24 hours?

Changed my Mom's card that got frauded and the new one was not good until she used it at an ATM. The frauders charged the new card before it was even activated. Happened on the next new replacement card as well. Pulled all her money and changed banks. No more problems. Hint: it was Arvest bank.

I have two separate accounts for my cards. One card I use for things like bills ie. recurring payments. The other is not a credit card is is a debit card with no credit on the account or card. It will only charge what is in the account. I use it for both in-person and on-line purchases. My carry around card. Put money in the account for my weeks budget and add money if planning to purchase something out of budget. It it gets hacked they don't get any more than my weeks budget. (which I should get back).

The best part is I don't have to update my card on all my recurring bill acounts if the carry around/internet debit card/ budgeted account is hacked.

If this is only happening with online transactions / accounts I'd seriously be looking at wiping every PC I had.

Sounds suspiciously like a key logger or similar malware.

Is she an iPhone or Android user?

Someone in your household taking it from her wallet and is using it on porn sites.

(Saying this half-jokingly. This has happened in one household I know wink wink.)

Does she have her own computer/iPad/whatever that she uses for almost everything? If so, then my guess is THAT is where the problem is. Some sort of trojan/keylogger type app that captures things when she uses them.

We get hit every once in a while, but for us, it's probably every couple of years. If it's happening that frequently, then either she's got a device that's compromised or someone in the household is suspect in my opinion. There aren't that many bad crooked things out there. Or maybe change where/how she does business.

ding, ding, ding, that's my vote.

+1. I was thinking the same when I read the OP.
And if you suspect a key logger, I'd wipe and then change passwords for every site I have a login for just to be safe.

Is the card number changed after every hit? If so then it sure sounds like tracking.

That's helpful. She has her own computer which only she uses, but we've replaced her PC recently with a laptop. It's possible that's the problem, so I'll give it a check-over. My thoughts were, unless this is a coincidence, that there's a common point, be it item or location. My other thought was where she leaves her bag at work.

I don't remember using her card on porn sites, and I'm the only other person in the house.

If you backed up the old PC and migrated her stuff to the new laptop then......

How about the phone?

iOS or Android?

I used to work for a credit card company. 19 out of 20 frauds were by Chinese Restaurants. Ah, the price of good dumplings.

The last time my card was compromised it was a local very popular Mexican restaurant employee. He went after just cards from one bank. The police led him away in handcuffs. When I went to get another car at the bank, they had used a stack of blanks cars they had in stock replacing cards from that one thief's actions. I did not loose one cent, just the time to go get another debit card.

Are the unknown users spending more or less than you wife?

My wife saw a pattern of our cards getting hacked after she you'd use them on groupon purchases.

I use cash only at restaurants...geeze, how tough is it to pick up cash at your bank?

I would think that one of the places she's shopping at is either hacked or they're cloning her card.

Cleary wife is the weakest link.
Replace wife.

My sister used her tablet doo dad to pay several of her bills online through her checking account. I stopped by her house the other day to retrieve her mail. Amongst the items in the mail box was her bank statement. I opened it up and was quite surprised to see that she made a phone payment to the electric company in the amount of $700 on the 20th of last month, and a day later on the 21st another phone payment for about $250 to the cable TV company.

Seeing as how my sister passed away on the 14th of last month, and her funeral was on the 20th of last month, I found these charges a little odd. So did the bank. The bank replaced the money in her account and now they are investigating the
culprit(s). I so hope it is the part time caretaker that forged $3500 worth of checks while she was "taking care" of my sister because she had a very flexible real job, working from home as tech support for account problems with Ebay via phone, or so she said.

That being said, has it ever occurred to you guys that anytime you hand someone a paper check drawn on your account, you are also handing them not only your bank account number but the routing number as well? What more do you need to make payments to vendors via automated telephone?

One of my wife's friends was paranoid about shredding all he junk mail if it had her name and address on it. I pointed out he name and address are listed in the phone book. And she wrote check for everything because she did not trust credit cards. I pointed her checking and routing number on a check and she almost when into meltdown.

I use my credit card at restaurants mostly because I want the wait staff to pay their fair share of taxes on the tips. 99% of cash tips are never reported. I pay a ton of taxes, everyone else needs to pay their fair share.

my wifes has been stolen several times also.
she narrowed it down to one business she was ordering from (for her business).
she has stopped doing business with them and no more problems.

CC security is joke. even putting the extra 3 digits on the back does no good when you give all that info to a stranger in another state.

the ones that sell the numbers don't use them right away. you will get "test" chargers on it.

The banks and CC industry will "eat" the losses...it's peanuts to what they "earn" by folks using them....even if you never pay one cent in interest. The "security" features are mostly to pacify the users of such imo.

When's the last time someone even looked at the card name/signature? But y'all keep earnin' the "free cashbacks".... they REALLY do like them folks more....seriously :(.

Seems like a not so great way to rip someone off.

What vendors are you paying via ACH that you do not have an account with that contains personally identifiable info?

Even if you set up a dummy account that they can't trace back to you how do you know there is enough of a balance in the checking account to even make it worthwhile?

Not saying it can't happen but it's probably the thing I'd worry least about as far as random strangers goes.

Lars. Her personal trainer. Have you checked that guy out yet?

Ah-ha, we didn't! Her old computer died completely, so I took out the hard drive and only copied the papers she had written for school. No other information copied over.

While I'm not going to eliminate the possibility that she has something on the computer, it's a significantly reduced chance. I scanned it yesterday and didn't find anything that wasn't supposed to be there.


She has an Android phone, but never uses it for online transactions and I don't think she has any card info on it at all.

Yes, different card number each time.

I've done that once before. It's a lot less expensive to keep getting credit card charges.

Nice! :d

I'm still not ruling out the computer and will take another look this evening.

I agree that there's a common point somewhere, and that's the most obvious one.

Probably fine then but FWIW, with a lot of that stuff, you have to know what you are looking for beforehand.

The good stuff will be undetectable and will simply reinstall itself after you "clean it up".

Hmm, any Chinese thumb drives?

Long shot. Home wireless password protected?

Long shot meaning it probably is.

Yes it is. Worth asking though.

The common link with my Mom's cards getting hacked was the BANK itself. Like I said. Moved her funds to a different bank and the problem stopped.

Cash? Bank?

Dude, you must be OOOOOLLLLDDDDD!

;)

Yep...but nobody has hacked our credit cards...yet. :rolleyes:

true.
my friends ex wife got his card and went to the ATM. had pics of her getting his money. no charges against her and the bank just ate it.

that's not how they usually get you.
EMAIL!!
don't open an email unless you know who it is from.
an email got my wife...again.

they down load key logger programs that send all your key strokes to them. even passwords.

Download Kaspersky and run a scan. Kaspersky will download and scan for viruses/malware where if your system has been infected the virus or malware can sometimes cloak itself from the antivirus/anti malware products on your system. A friend swore his hard drive had no viruses or malware so I had him bring it here and I scanned with Kaspersky. I found multiple viruses on the drive, showed him, cleaned it and had him reinstall. Problems gone.
Might be worth a try.

Gas station card reader?

Buddy's wife had her card hacked through whatever the hardware is they place in those things.

I go to restaurants without cash or a credit card. They usually accept my offer to wash dishes, but usually let me go after an hour. Works for me.

Antivirus scanners are crap at scanning after infection, on a machine that has viruss's in memory.
Because the viris is in memory and will shadow itself in memory against the scanner..


The only good way to scan, if you think you are already infected, is from a known good Boot CD with AV on the bootdisk.

And i say CD, because you do not want a writeable medium for this purpose