Credit Card Identity Theft – Whose Responsiblity Is This?

As promised here is an account of what happened last month with my credit card number being stolen and used over in the UK.

Sometime in late February or early March my bank, Huntington, sent me a new Visa debit card. Odd I thought, since my card didn’t expire for at least another year. Along with the new card was a small insert explaining that there was as security breach with a company that processes credit card transactions for them. “OK, no big deal, the bank’s on top of this.”, I thought and I activated the new card and then didn’t think twice about it after that.

About two weeks later I went to my account online to draft an international wire transfer for a staff member and I saw that my account was really low for how much I thought should be there. First thing that came to mind was that a check from a client bounced, but then I started seeing odd transactions from the UK. There were some credits and some debits that were small (~$25), but they were the same amount going in and out, essentially zeroing each other out. Interestingly, the bank called me as I was trying to figure out what was going on. The woman said that she was with the fraud division and they were noticing some “unusual activity”. Something about feces and Sherlock, right?

The missing amounts totaled nearly $2,500 including some that were scheduled to post that night.

Well, as we were going through it and identifying the bad transactions I noticed that the charges were all made against the OLD credit card number and they were all made well past the date that I activated the new card! That is when the Huntington agent told me that the old numbers are not necessarily deactivated right away and that it can take weeks before they are deactivated.

Now call me silly, but doesn’t that sound more than just wrong? I mean WTF? My account is a corporate account with very high daily limits because of the purchases that I have to make from time to time (servers, services, software, etc.). Theoretically these perps could have wiped my account out in the matter of a couple days, not only emptying my account but even digging into a overdraft line of credit, literally putting me in the red!

Why? Because the bank or credit card company doesn’t have a method of canceling/deactivating one card when another is activated? Seriously wrong!

To Huntington’s credit they did issue a provisional funds covering all the charges, but it took them five days to do it. And granted, I am including the Sat and Sun since we found this out on a Friday, but still since it was clearly their fault they should have credited me immediately (IMO).

OK, so where do I go from here? Should I report this to the SEC or some other gov’t agency? I seriously feel that this is something that was completely avoidable, and with fault being in no part my own. I am really careful with my identity, and I watch my bank account pretty carefully, knowing that something like this can happen. But I still feel that something should be done to prevent this from happening to others, and am still flabbergasted that it happened at all.

Please if you have a suggestion – other that making sure my old numbers are deactivated when I activate a new one – please share it here or email me directly (greg at corwin dot org)

Posted in Identy Theft | 1 Comment »

M.I.A. – quick catch up

Ok, I know that I have been a little Missing In Action but it has been a really busy few months. There were plenty of things that I want to talk about, but just couldn’t commit the time. So here is the synopsis:

• Song of the Moment: M.I.A. – Paper Airplanes (Not for the faint-of-heart – or small children)
• I am so proud that our nation has moved on and elected Barak Obama. I just hope that he can fix the CF left behind by his predecessor
• I got totally serious about getting back in shape, and have put on about 10 lbs (which is a good thing). I hope to gain another 10 by summer. I hate our gym (Silverlake) and will be looking at others now that our contract is up.
• I also started running again, and it’s hard to believe how much punishment the body can take and still keep going. Each run gets easier, but later my shins and back are killing me. Hopefully this will get better…
• Buddy has been making great improvements in his speech, but still has anger management difficulties when he’s frustrated with something. (Though he likes Milestones much more this year)
• The recession hasn’t hit us very hard (yet), but I think we are going to put off building the cabin until next year
• I finally broke down and joined Facebook and to my surprise I really like it. Single serving “friends” are what I expected, but I actually have been able to catch up with some people that I have always wondered how they were doing. Mainly people I knew from Dixie Heights (high school) and old Navy buddies.
• I saw Coraline and LOVED IT!
• I am planning a garden in our side yard. I don’t really like gardening all that much, but I want to grow things that are hard to get at the local markets. Plus it’s that whole green footprint thing. We’ll see how it goes.
• RANT: I am going to post an entry about this and I encourage you to comment. I had $2200 disappear from my bank account due to credit card fraud, and it was totally the banks’ fault. They had a security breach and sent me a new CC. No big deal right? Well, did you know that when you activate your new card, the old one is not deactivated? I didn’t know that and the bank made good on it, but it took them almost a week to credit my account. I was damn lucky my account wasn’t wiped clean.
• I saw this ad – I hope that it stays true to Maurice Sendak’s original children’s book because it was my favorite as a kid

Posted in Friends | 3 Comments »

Sailin’ South

My friend Dan is in the middle of sailing his boat from the Chesapeake Bay, near Annapolis, south to who-knows-where mainly trying to get away from cold – “anywhere warm” according to him.

Right now he is in Oriental, North Carolina and he made the front page of the town’s website – this time just for being caught in his pajama’s.

http://towndock.net/on-the-cover/pajamas-on-the-town-dock

Posted in Dan Haywood, Friends | 1 Comment »

Not to be out done, my sister Allison joins us

My sister Allison came down to NKY the week before my brother got married and joined us for a weekend in the Gorge. You are really starting to see that I love it down there right?

Well she loved it too. After I showed her our land down there she got bitten by the same bug and decided to jump into the pool. Yep, she bought a plot about 1000′ from ours! I think it’s great, ten years from now we will all be down there enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner with plenty of room for everyone since between us we will have about 6 bedrooms!

She and her son Luke came on a few short hikes with us (he’s only 3 so he can’t hike far), and we stayed at the King’s Point cabin.

Linky to the photos

Posted in Family, Red River Gorge | 1 Comment »

Red River Gorge – Nov 2008

Will we ever get enough of the Red? I doubt it! Here are some photos that I took on section “I” of the Rough Trail and Whittleton Arch.

Note the one of Alsatia counting the tree rings to see how old the tree was before it fell across the trail. My budding environmentalist!

Linky to the full Slideshow…

Posted in Red River Gorge | 3 Comments »