Thanks for mentioning the vending machine angle. I'll definitely avoid using cards in them in the future. It makes sense, I just hadn't considered it.

I wonder how chip-and-pin technology is going meditate this?

Also, here in Asia every bank has TFA for online purchases when OTP (one time password) is send via SMS to a mobile phone to authenticate the purchase. Interesting to know how much this helped to reduce credit card fraud

Would requiring to see the credit card used for the purchase at checkin reduce this kind of fraud for airlines?

Go to united.com and see what info is needed to book a flight for the situation where cardholder is not traveling. That is exactly what they had. Any more would be unnecessary, any less would not work.

Airline purchases (other than very close-in purchases) generally don't ring any bells because they are not frequently used by fraudsters. Fraudsters like to get their merchandise and run, they don't want to use stolen cards to pay for something that they are going to receive in the future and have to show ID to use. It's too easy to get caught when you have to show your passport to claim your stolen items.

Most likely you caught this before the trip was scheduled. In the event that they took the trip already, then either UAL, their merchant processor, or the issuer will bear the loss according to their agreement.

Highly doubtful. If they did, then UAL knows who they are (assuming they didn't commit other crimes like using stolen passports) and can track them down.

I would also turn on 'card not present' transaction alerts. Very helpful for spotting such transactions.

Chase does not have this.

Same situation here. I had an AmEx card I hadn't used in months, which I then used at a hotel in Senegal to charge a ~$3,000 bill.

The next day....$24,000 of shopping in Paris...Hermes, Chanel, etc etc. AmEx never blinked at any of the charges...I often wonder how their fraud algorithms work

United does subscribe to "verified by visa," however, I've never once had it result in a call.

Just today on singaporeair.com a relatively low transaction (about $80) triggered me having to call visa.

We had a Gymboree affinity card that we used exclusively at the Gymboree that's two miles from our house for a couple hundred bucks. Then we get a bill for $15K of luxury goods at two Paris boutiques and US Bank doesn't blink an eye. Like, seriously? You don't need a very complex algorithm to figure out that one of these things is not like the other.

My guess is that the OP saw the charge, called United and asked what it was about, and United told him the exacting routing from LOS-IAD-LGA and the names of the passengers for whom he had supposedly bought the tickets. The names were Nigerian. I don't think he's assuming anything.

If my card was used for a fraudulent purchase of plane tickets from Dublin to Boston in the names of Seamus O'Riordan and Siobhan Barry, I would reasonably conclude that Irish people traveled on my dime, I don't think that would be an unfair racist assumption.

They do. Login to your online account, go to 'account alerts', check the box that says 'Notify Me When...An online, phone or mail charge is authorized on my credit card'.

I didn't realise that Nigeria had exclusive use of certain names.

Making a leap from circumstancial evidence to a conclusion on the basis of ethnicity is exactly what racism and stereotyping is about. The fact that it is so pervasive on Flyertalk that it is even defended by users like yourself is a sad commentary on the way this community has deteriorated over the years.

I've never had my cards ripped off, and I only know one person who has. It seems a lot more common in the US (although that could be a false perception from reading threads like this where lots of people discuss how they were).

I think British retailers before Chip and Pin were much more strict about checking signatures on strips as well though. I would relatively frequently ask for secondary ID if I didn't think the signature was a close enough match.

Of course, having said that... next week, the scammers will have got my card. There's nothing like tempting fate

Nigerian's not an ethnicity, it's a nationality. Having said that, I work with enough Nigerians to know my Yoruba from my Igbo and can generally tell by someone's name where they're from, just as people do with , say, Orkney or Basque names. "Cultural awareness" to some, "racism" to others.
Only up to certain amounts. When I got my card stolen about 20 years ago, I found out from the police that the bar was set at �40 before retailers asked for ID and made a phone check. Thieves knew that too.

I suspect that after a decade or more of "Nigerian Scam" emails, the majority of which earlier seemed to originate in Nigeria and involve persons with apparently Nigerian names and involved in Nigerian government or businesses, the OP and most other FTers would be likely to blame fraudulently ticket purchasers/travelers from Lagos to IAH (or anywhere else) on Nigerians.

Reinforcing that conclusion might well be based on the events of the last few weeks during which the Nigerian government and military have displayed an almost unimaginable level of ineptitude and an inability to act or react to the current situation there. Prejudice is often the product of perception.