Pirated!

One thing I've appreciated about having a Discover Card is that when I make large purchases they put a hold on my card and call me to confirm the transaction. They even call me at both home and at work, and often within 30 minutes of making the charge! It's been comforting to know that they have technology, and are using it well.

Today, unfortunately, it turned out that I was more than incidentally grateful that they perform this service: I got a call at work late in the day that my account is being investigated for suspicion of having been used by someone else. The woman who called verified my recent charges and three - from this past weekend - were legit, but two - from today - were not. So I had her close my account, and she said someone from their security department would contact me about setting up a new account soon.

Just to make sure, I then called Discover using the number on my card - since, after all, I had no way of verifying the original caller's identity - and they confirmed that yes, it's all true.

So my credit card has been pirated.

(It occurs to me that I didn't explicitly confirm that I won't be responsible for the bogus charges. I should do that.)

I am pretty careful with my personal information. I shred documents, I try to avoid giving out my social security number in some cases, and so forth. But it's hard to be completely secure, especially since many companies which provide services which might put my personal information at risk don't bear a financial or criminal burden in case the information is stolen. Which is ridiculous, but is also reality. (Bruce Schneier often writes about this sort of thing.)

I checked around and as far as I can tell, only my one credit card has been misused, which suggests that I'm not the victim of identity theft (thank goodness!). Of course, that also means that the thief could have gotten my credit card number from almost anywhere: Tapped an Internet connection, cracked a Web retail site's database, or even just been an unscrupulous employee of a local retail store I patronize. Who knows? I don't know whether my case is an isolated incident, or part of a much larger investigation, though I got the impression that it's the latter. On the other hand, I contacted a couple of friends who also have Discover cards, and they both checked and do not appear to be victims of the same sort of theft.

Anyway, it's frustrating. And making me paranoid. And a hassle, since I do have some automatic charges which go to that card. Hopefully I will just get a new account and it will ultimately not be a big problem.

But right now I'm pretty stressed out about it.