Originally Posted by
beachmouse
A while back, I had a card get compromised because the third party billing system my county had been using to process online water/sewer/trash utility payments got hacked. So card fraud issues can indeed come from pretty much anywhere.
True, however simple fraud is a big contributor. The lack of chip and pin and the process of handing off cards with zero authentication to wait staff is a big reason why the US leads credit card fraud globally.
Of course, data breaches are also a factor and theres no guarantee. However the fact that this happened shortly after the OP was in ATL heavily suggests it was stolen at a place where the OP had to hand off the card to someone else.