Thanks for protecting my data!

Recently my wife used a credit card (which she hadn’t used for many months prior) to make a small (less than $20) purchase via her cell phone - not at a retail store or via the internet. Just a few days later she received a telephone call at home from the credit card issuer seeking clarification about what they considered unusual activity. When she called them back, using what she knew to be a veritable phone number for the company, they told her that they’d flagged the card because they’d detected an unusual charge attempt. She verified that she had not tried to make a $1 purchase using the card. The company was right in assuming it was a fraudulent attempt and it was fitting that they froze the account. Apparently, small charges like that are often made by fraudsters trying to ascertain if account numbers are valid and active.  

What left me unsettled though was the question of how our card information got into the wrong hands. Obviously the company where my wife made that one recent purchase somehow failed to protect our data. Having made just one charge in five months made it pretty clear.  I'm aware that some people are averse to making online purchases, worried that someone will be able to intercept their info in transit, but telephone purchases can also be unsafe if your card info is left unprotected. In this case, the card issuer was on the ball, although my wife would’ve caught on once the bill arrived in the mail. But had neither of them picked up on the bogus charge, then the card could’ve eventually been used to make some serious, significant purchases, and caused lots of headaches getting things straightened out.

In the end, the matter was taken care of efficiently and in less than 12 hours. The old account number was deactivated and by the next morning UPS delivered a new card right to our door.