Security Scare Foiled!

  I got a phone call this morning from Walmart.com wanting to know if I bought a $300 gift card online.  "NO NO NO,"  I said.  Immediate call to the bank stopped the whole thing in its tracks and this was the only fraudulent charge. Lucky me.

What I want to know now is how the heck did Walmart figure out it was a suspicious charge?  How did they know my phone number?  Security must be better than I had imagined.   

WalMart is the next world order. You didn't know this?

OMG!  No, I didn't. 

It's a $300 gift card. It's a tad bit suspicious. Plus, the shipping address or something could have been off.

At least they took the time to call me and for that I'm grateful.  I would not have liked the idea of somebody scamming $300 off me.

This was a brand new debit card because I had lost mine so I happen to know how the fraud occurred.  

Edit: Make that attempted fraud.

Debit cards hold a great deal of information like name and address. It wouldn't take much to know your phone number from those two pieces of information.

That information is usually on the security strip and this attempt was made on-line.  The only place I had used the new card was a very well-know digital satellite television company.  It was New Year's Eve and I had had a little bubbly when I stupidly decided to change my card number for the auto-pay over the phone to a real person instead of using a secure web page. That company, of course, has all the information needed at their fingertips. D-U-M-B.

lawl, silly peachy 

No doubt, New Year's is a hazardous time with lots of dumb accidents.  I understand there's a spike in the birthrate in September.   

That information is usually on the security strip and this attempt was made on-line.  The only place I had used the new card was a very well-know digital satellite television company.  It was New Year's Eve and I had had a little bubbly when I stupidly decided to change my card number for the auto-pay over the phone to a real person instead of using a secure web page. That company, of course, has all the information needed at their fingertips. D-U-M-B.

Ah.  Well I hope you managed to trace it back because that's a serious breach of security for that digital satellite company.