PSA: watch for microtransactions

[rmd]

someone's up to something bad, and they're starting out with microtransactions to test credit cards.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081202-odd-microtransactions-may-point-to-credit-card-breach.html

let's be careful out there.

Comments

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for ruining my day. And my Christmas shopping plans.

[sunspiral.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link! One additional thing to beware is that if you enable online viewing of your credit card statement to do more frequent checking of your card's activity, the credit card company may have fine print to use this as an excuse to stop sending you paper statements.

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

When our card got got last spring they sent through $1 to "linens n things" before charging the computer equipment. Our bank caught it on the second charge and called us up to verify, which was awesome.

[kimberlogic.livejournal.com]

Thank you for pointing this out!

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

My credit card company automatically freezes my account if it sees suspicious activity such as this. It was triggered once by a dodgy domain registrar, but I wasn't notified in time, to be nastily surprised when I couldn't pay a vet bill. However, I am still glad that my credit card company slams the door when they something that looks unsavory.

[drwex]

Hunh. Discover recently reissued my card because of a suspected fraud or theory that the account had been compromised. I hadn't seen any microcharges, though, or anything out of the expected.