I kept wondering why Kallcents sounded so familiar, it's a sister company associated with Faxaway. So I called them, the charge is NOT related to Faxaway (which bills as Faxaway not Kallcents) and apparently somebody tried to get a $100 authorization for a prepaid calling account.
The order was declined because the address did not match my billing address. And THAT is probably why Cap One called, and not because of the charges.
HOWEVER, the Kallcents order was placed with one of my dormant addresses - that's the scary part.
So, I've been trying to rationalize what's going on, but I can only figure out what's NOT going on:
It's not a random card # theft
It's not theft by a vendor or anywhere I've used that card because they would have used the RIGHT address.
It's not someone who reads my web sites. Not only do I not post full account numbers for open accounts, but this address isn't posted anywhere.
It's not someone in my household because my dog doesn't place any orders.
It's highly unlikely that someone "broke in" and stole the info but left everything else. The dog's been watching the place too.
Deputy Allen just returned my call to the Sheriff:
He immediately asked whether I've ordered on the internet before, and since I've ordered literally hundreds of times, he concluded that this is how my card # was stolen.
I think it's really odd that someone who I ordered from would not use the CORRECT billing address, which they obviously have because otherwise the order would have been declined.
Additionally, most orders are through Ebay and I use PayPal. While there are a lot of bad things about PayPal, the real GOOD part is that the sellers do NOT get your creditcard # - only PayPal has it. That eliminates most, but not all online purchases.
He really didn't want to investigate this, telling me that unless I have a suspect, there's nothing he can do.
I asked him whether it wasn't up to them to do an investigation!
This is so simple. I assume that just about all companies who offer credit card processing log the IPs (as I do for every posting) and if this really was just some conartist who got my info on the net, I'm not worried.
HOWEVER, if this was someone locally, I need to know who that was.
Most companies also require that 3 digit number on the back of the card, and I want to know if s/he had that.
So far, the only people I can think of who have both the address AND my credit card number are Trans Union, Equifax and their lawyers. But they don't have the expiration date.
Also noteworthy is the fact that nobody at Capital One advised that I should do ANYTHING whatsoever other than to wait for the new card to arrive and not to use the old number anymore.
Posted by Christine at March 31, 2004 03:56 PM