Be careful with your debit cards, folks.

[kengr]

I was just checking my checking account online to see if I'd been charged yet for some toys I'd ordered. (*Why* do sites offer 2-3 day shipping without noting that they may take longer than that to get around to shipping your order?)
Looking down a few items I saw two charges from businesses in "Tokyo JP". Say *what*?!

I thought back and couldn't see them as being anything I'd ordered off the web. So a quick phone call to the bank and they are going to be looked into.

Oddly, the person I spoke to said that the charges had triggered a flag and the fraud had supposedly tried to contact me. I don't have any indication of them calling.

Anyway, according to news items I've seen, this is endemic. The info is apparently getting swiped at third party clearing houses for debit card transactions. It's best to use your card as a *credit* card and *sign* for things. This causes a different routing and the folks doing the bebit card scams aren't going to sign for stuff (or if they do, they charge slips will get caught more easily.

Comments

[badriya.livejournal.com]

What is a third party clearing house?

[kengr]

When you use a credit or debit card, the merchasnt doesn't contasct your bank or credit card company directly.

The transaction goes to a clearinghouse, which processes it. Then it gets bundled with lots of other transactions and sent on. Often as a spool of magnetic tape or the like.

"Third party" means that they are neither the merchant nopr the banl/credity coard company.

Thing is, these clearinghouses get a cut of the transaction, as does the bank or credit card company. So merchants have an incentive to find the cheapest one they can.

So the wages at the clearinghouses are low. And the employees aren't all that well screened...

Then again, there are a *lot* of security holes in this sort of business. Customer service numbers for a lot of businesses used to (and still may, for all I know) be staffed by prison inmates!!!!

I wish I was making that up... But it was cheap labor. And they tried to have some safeguards (like nothing to write on, so the inmatyes couldn't write down credit card numbers and the like).

Check the back issues at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/risks for all sorts of studity that will have you distrusting businesses.

[badriya.livejournal.com]

Eeeeeek!