I'm posting this here, vs. the credit card forum, because I'm wondering if it's more to do with cycling cards. If this is the wrong forum, please let me know.

Since mid-October, we've had four cards (three different banks) with fraudulent activity. None were stolen. one had not been used in months and one was very rarely used.

Prior to that, we've never had fraudulent activity on a card before. I've only turned credit card pro in the past nine months or so. Or semi-pro (not quite sure if I've actually been called up to the show, but that's what I write in all my letters home).

About the same time period for me, but not 1 problem yet and I compare my charges to my bills every month.

I don't know if this the right forum either, but I am wondering also. My new Citi Visa, the one that I got 75K bonus was stolen. I had the card in my possession the entire time, but somehow they charged at gas stations around the country. Two were Citgo in New Jersey and the rest were Pilot gas stations around the country, New Mexico, Texas, Minnesota, Arizona and California. I have no idea how they did it either. When I go to the gas station I can't charge more than a $100, these charges ranged from $75-$995. Has this happened to anyone else? They racked up a tick under $5000 in charges!
I'd love any input.

I started multiple credit card applications last january and last month I got my first fraud alert ever. The attempt use was a walmart in texas and i am in california. Chase actually caught it, i had not used the card in about 3 months. it was in my drawer at home.

Interesting...two of the cards were from Chase (one last month, one now), another was Capital One.

I have to hand to all of the banks...great fraud detection, and we do a lot of on line buying. We download transactions at least every few days, and they still caught it before we did each time. Chase did joke that they were immediately suspicious since I hadn't used the one card for several months ("hey I have to hit that 30k for the BA!").

I had potential fraudulent activity on my OnePass account a week or so ago .. hadn't used it much either. Chase caught it.

Same thing here.

No increase here, but with the economic woes I'm sure even the thieves are seeing tougher times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/ny...-unsealed.html

Card skimming maybe? It could really happen anywhere, not just at ATM machines if someone has bad intent.

Luckily, I haven't had it happen to me and I monitor my accounts regularly. I imagined it's a major hassle to deal with it though.

Happened to me twice in the past year. One of the cards had been approved just 10 days before, had not yet arrived in the mail, and somehow had been "authorized" and charges posted. It was a Chase card and fortunately they had sent an email that the card had been mailed. I went on my online chase account and the new number (which I did not yet have) was already linked to my account (and showed the last 4 digits of the new CC#) and showed a balance.

What Chase wouldn't tell me was how it was possible someone called from my home phone (not possible that I was aware of) and had so much personal information about me as to authorize a card (they often ask A LOT of questions, some of which I've had to really think about such as older makes & year/model of cars I've ever owned, going back more than 25 years and every address I ever lived at for more than 1 week.

So if you are expecting a new card, always be aware of the time frame in which is should have arrived and follow up if it doesn't.

Either this or the numbers are being stolen during electronic crimes (i.e. hacking). Though to be honest, the skimming is the far more likely explanation IMO.

Account numbers have been stolen in wholesale quantities due to data breaches at transaction processors. It's easy to manufacture cards encoded with that account data. Your physical card need not have been stolen or skimmed, and the fraud will not necessarily occur soon after the breach because the numbers are sold.

micropayment .ch authorization on my Sapphire in the last few hours. Payment service in Germany. 4th card in about 18 months compromised. I guess I'll have to call chase again. Just received the automated call.

4147-2020-8631-5486 exp 07/14

testing for the Sony affiliated AllClear identity crap alert that has so far seemed to be useless.

Here's an interesting article:

US generates 27% of world's credit and debit transactions, but accounts for over 47% of the world's card frauds

It's understandable; anyone can put a skimming device at a gas station or whatever to swipe off your card's info from ancient fifty year old mag-stripe technology. A skimming device can be easily bought on eBay for $100-$300 these days.

And when was the last time a cashier at a store even bothered to check if your signature matches against the signature on the back of your credit card? For the most part they just swipe and hand back your card without even looking at the signature. A crook can easily set up a skimming device, make a perfect clone of your card, and use that cloned card at a K-Mart or BestBuy with the safety of knowing that minimum wage earning cashiers would care less to even verify your signature.

IMO, signature verification is a vestigial remnant of the 1950s when graphology was considered solid science anyway; it has little use in the age of e-mail and instantaneous communication of the 21st century.

And until the US moves to chip technology, expect the problem to get worse as the crime rings find the US the easiest market in which to make fraudulent cards