Originally Posted by
inlanikai
A couple of weeks ago there was a story about a credit card payment clearing house (Heartland Payment Systems) that got breached. Big numbers of cards got potentially compromised. I bet that is the source of all this. I don't think AA per se was the issue as my two cards have not been replaced and are just fine. Rather it is probably where you used those cards and whether Heartland cleared the transaction.
http://www.2008breach.com/
Exactly. We have 4 AA cards in our household. None has any issue.
I understand people get nervous when they hear about security breach. And for those who have the habits of storing their cards online for all sorts of autopay or online purchases, a new card number means major pain.
However, in all reality, any autopays will automatically be transferred to the new card number as long as such are pre-authorized. Actually, even fraudulent charge, if it is coded as pre-authorized, recurrent charge, will find its way to the new replacement card even after the old card was closed due to said fraudulent charge! It sounds ridiculous, but that has been exactly what I am told by Chase.
I learn this from a REAL breach on a Chase card - the card was only used twice before a fraudulent charge showed up - since the first usage was to pay AT&T online, and the second usage was in a restaurant - I have to conclude the card info was stolen by the waiter and subsequently sold to criminals. The fraudulent charge came from California, in the form of a health club monthly due. I was lucky to catch it right when it was posted. Chase replaced the breached card with a new one. The next month SAME fraudulent charge showed up AGAIN on the new card. After talking to Chase security dept, I was told, as long as the charge was pre-authorized, and coded as recurrent charge, there is NOTHING Chase can do to prevent it to go to the new card!!! The only way to stop it, is for me to call the merchant to inform it there is a fraudulent usage from its customer on my card! I could not believe what I heard... Once Chase removed the 2nd fraudulent charge I closed the new card for good, and kept the card online for subsequent monitoring. No more fraudulent charge showed up in the next 6 months and I finally deleted it from online.
FWIW, my neighbor's AMEX was also breached. They are seniors, dont do online banking. They found out their card was breached when they received their monthly statement. Close to $20K merchandises were charged on their card. Even after they got their replacement card after reporting to AMEX, they still saw another few thousands fraudulent charges on the following statement, and received the similar answer from AMEX.