I thought this might be interesting to some of you.

My AMEX card number was somehow compromised back in March. AMEX very quickly detected the fraudulent charge attempt, blocked it, and contacted me. They overnighted me a new card, closed out the old account, and I felt protected since the number had been changed.

Well, apparently that isnt always the case.

I noticed last Saturday that there was a Netflix charge to my account. I was surprised to see this, because I had only done a evaluation of Netflix maybe 6 or 7 months ago, then cancelled the service.

I called AMEX, and the charge came through using my 'OLD' number. I asked them how this was possible, and was told (twice, because I didnt believe it and had to call back to confirm), that with subscription services, the old number CAN be used even after the old card number is changed.

Someone, who had my compromised number, was able to charge to NetFlix because it was seen as a subscription service by AMEX. When I called Netflix, they confirmed the old number was being used by another individual that was not me, and they were starting the fraud investigation.

The only way to stop this is to put a block on AMEX for the merchant. Apparently there is no way to tell AMEX not to accept authorizations for subscription based services after you change your card number. This seems pretty ridiculous to me.