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I was on my way to work yesterday, and was running a bit late due to coming straight from the cardiologist. (Stress echo: no blockages. Yay. 
) Stopped at the nearest gas station; as it's not the cheapest one in town, I only put in $20 worth, which is about one round trip in this vehicle. Here in NJ the stations are commonly set up to pay at the pump, but self-serve is illegal, so the pump jockey has to take the card from me and insert it in the slot himself.
I get to work, I remember that I've got a credit card due on the 20th. I log on to pay it, and just for the heck of it I check the Recent Transactions list of my various cards. (They all wound up at the same megabank due to various mergers over the years; one of them even started out as a NYNEX calling card, once upon a time. Remember those?)
There's the purchase at the gas station, sure enough, but it's for only $1. OK, I can see that, they authorize a dollar before pumping to see if the card will go though at all.
But then there's another pair of transactions. A pending charge, and a pending credit, both for $1.70. The merchant is shown as "Aaron House", of whom I've never heard, with no phone number attached. This smells vaguely fishy (or phishy) to me somehow.
I call the credit card issuer and ask them who that is. They tell me as follows:
1. The company is listed as a software vendor.
2. The transaction was classed as "rugs/floor coverings".
3. The telephone number (which she had to look up). I reverse lookup the number and find it's a CPA's office somewhere in Cheeselandia.
4. The card was not present; it was an "internet transaction".
All right, something definitely smells phishy there. Perhaps someone ganked my number, ran a charge to see if the card was live, and then credited it the same day, hoping both transactions would age out before I noticed them.
I asked her if there might have been a skimmer on the pump; she says it certainly sounds suspicious, but there's unfortunately no proof. Also, this card has the RFID chip in it, so they might not even have needed a skimmer, just a reader stuck on or near the pump.
The credit card lady suggests canceling this card and reissuing it with a new number, and I agree that this seems a prudent course of action. Shame, too, because just a couple weeks ago that very card was cancelled and reissued due to attempted fraud, and I'd only just gotten it.
(They'd called me on that one. Seems someone had tried to charge $999.90 on it at zagg.com, which sells mostly iPhone cases and similar cheap crap: I can't even imagine how many of those he had to order to total up to that much money.)
So it looks like I might have dodged a bullet here. Were it not for the one-in-30 coincidence of another of my credit cards having a bill due that day, plus my own nosyness on my own transactions, I might be looking at a huge charge for some random crap that I didn't even buy. Sure they'd reverse it when I noticed, but some people don't even look at their bills before paying them...
) Stopped at the nearest gas station; as it's not the cheapest one in town, I only put in $20 worth, which is about one round trip in this vehicle. Here in NJ the stations are commonly set up to pay at the pump, but self-serve is illegal, so the pump jockey has to take the card from me and insert it in the slot himself.I get to work, I remember that I've got a credit card due on the 20th. I log on to pay it, and just for the heck of it I check the Recent Transactions list of my various cards. (They all wound up at the same megabank due to various mergers over the years; one of them even started out as a NYNEX calling card, once upon a time. Remember those?)
There's the purchase at the gas station, sure enough, but it's for only $1. OK, I can see that, they authorize a dollar before pumping to see if the card will go though at all.
But then there's another pair of transactions. A pending charge, and a pending credit, both for $1.70. The merchant is shown as "Aaron House", of whom I've never heard, with no phone number attached. This smells vaguely fishy (or phishy) to me somehow.
I call the credit card issuer and ask them who that is. They tell me as follows:
1. The company is listed as a software vendor.
2. The transaction was classed as "rugs/floor coverings".
3. The telephone number (which she had to look up). I reverse lookup the number and find it's a CPA's office somewhere in Cheeselandia.
4. The card was not present; it was an "internet transaction".
All right, something definitely smells phishy there. Perhaps someone ganked my number, ran a charge to see if the card was live, and then credited it the same day, hoping both transactions would age out before I noticed them.
I asked her if there might have been a skimmer on the pump; she says it certainly sounds suspicious, but there's unfortunately no proof. Also, this card has the RFID chip in it, so they might not even have needed a skimmer, just a reader stuck on or near the pump.
The credit card lady suggests canceling this card and reissuing it with a new number, and I agree that this seems a prudent course of action. Shame, too, because just a couple weeks ago that very card was cancelled and reissued due to attempted fraud, and I'd only just gotten it.
(They'd called me on that one. Seems someone had tried to charge $999.90 on it at zagg.com, which sells mostly iPhone cases and similar cheap crap: I can't even imagine how many of those he had to order to total up to that much money.)
So it looks like I might have dodged a bullet here. Were it not for the one-in-30 coincidence of another of my credit cards having a bill due that day, plus my own nosyness on my own transactions, I might be looking at a huge charge for some random crap that I didn't even buy. Sure they'd reverse it when I noticed, but some people don't even look at their bills before paying them...
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