(semiOT) interesting fraud on my credit card (happy ending)
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Jason Davies
Dec 26, 2024, 5:08:49 PM12/26/24
to Sussex Mac User Group
Hi Smuggers,
Merry Xmas to you all.
Given we've all been buying things on credit cards (I expect!), I thought I'd share this story as it's a variation on fraud I wasn't familiar with.
Amex (who I recommend for this) flagged on Xmas eve that CDKeys.com had requested a payment via paypal from my account. They declined as I didn't respond (I don't get up at 7.20 on Xmas now my kids are grown) and asked me to ring, and when I did we worked out this was the 3rd one. The first one a couple of weeks ago for 0.79 went through, the second one for 12.99 also went through a few days later. What threw me noticing this was that I had bought something for that amount from Amazon the day before (coincidence) so didn't twig it was a separate transaction.
This is where it got interesting. Though Amex were apparently asked by paypal for CDKeys, there was no history of it in Paypal. So somehow, they were sending a request that claimed to be paypal-authorised, but wasn't from paypal.
The moral of the story is to watch out for discrepancies between paypal and whichever card you have linked to paypal...
[I've changed passwords, email addresses etc, and Amex refunded me but I'm still a bit puzzled about how they got as far as they did, and whether anything of mine was ever hacked. I have no account with CDKeys [game website] and can't find any trace of ever using them].
So keep safe folks. The old advice about checking for statements as crooks start with small amounts then escalate still holds true!
Cheers,
Jason
Merry Xmas to you all.
Given we've all been buying things on credit cards (I expect!), I thought I'd share this story as it's a variation on fraud I wasn't familiar with.
Amex (who I recommend for this) flagged on Xmas eve that CDKeys.com had requested a payment via paypal from my account. They declined as I didn't respond (I don't get up at 7.20 on Xmas now my kids are grown) and asked me to ring, and when I did we worked out this was the 3rd one. The first one a couple of weeks ago for 0.79 went through, the second one for 12.99 also went through a few days later. What threw me noticing this was that I had bought something for that amount from Amazon the day before (coincidence) so didn't twig it was a separate transaction.
This is where it got interesting. Though Amex were apparently asked by paypal for CDKeys, there was no history of it in Paypal. So somehow, they were sending a request that claimed to be paypal-authorised, but wasn't from paypal.
The moral of the story is to watch out for discrepancies between paypal and whichever card you have linked to paypal...
[I've changed passwords, email addresses etc, and Amex refunded me but I'm still a bit puzzled about how they got as far as they did, and whether anything of mine was ever hacked. I have no account with CDKeys [game website] and can't find any trace of ever using them].
So keep safe folks. The old advice about checking for statements as crooks start with small amounts then escalate still holds true!
Cheers,
Jason
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