Credit Card Fraud

[stormwench]

I never allow sites to save my info. I have wondered why as site would even want to take that risk and save that information for you. How many times a day do we hear about some company losing customer data in one way or the other. I have no idea, no matter how big or how well known a giant in the industry everyone and anyone can be hacked and no matter who they are I don't want to make my information any more at risk than it already is. And this just not apply to vaping vendors but to anyone place you go online or even if you walk into a store front. Information like that is always at risk.

Then again, it may have just been a simple mistake on the sellers or processors fault. Even if processing is most all automatic human error can make its way into a system and sometimes the wrong account can get charged. Usually as small unauthorized charge that only happens to one person is not a case of hacking but either a simple mistake where someone keys in the wrong cc number for the order after getting them confused. Hacking are not going to the trouble to hack a whole system to pay for some stiff through an online vendor they are going after the big accounts and large amounts of money - plus they want to transfer cash not buy something they might not need. Occasionally you will get an employee that will run your credit card for your order and then run it again for something(s) he/she but that's just plain theft no one broke into some companies records to pick up your cc. If its not an honest mistake things like this are usually employee theft.

Still, if a cc processor or company is hacked you don't want your cc information in there if there is anyway to keep it from being on record. Never leave the information online anywhere that a hacker can get it and use it for what they really are after and why they hack for information - big money. A hacker is not going to risk jail time over hacking into a site, getting your cc and buying a few things from that vendor. And if their site was hacked they should be contacting all their customers so they can turn off their credit card.

Any reliable retailer or vendor or wholesaler that double charged you, over charged you or applied your credit charge number to another order will quickly refund that amount and get it straightened out. have had it happen several times - all in amounts under 200 dollars (no one was draining my account or otherwise using it except in that case so i knew no one was hacking anyone) and a phone call to the retailer solved it.

To tell you the truth I would be a little worried that once you notified them nothing was done immediately and you are waiting to hear from them. A simple mistake is not fraud so I wonder why they stepped in and covered you instead of the vendor taking care of it. The fact that it was not resolved by the vendor at once and that you had to have it considered fraud to get your fraud coverage to pay really makes me wonder why you would do business with them again. There is a difference between an act of fraud and a hacking. Fraud would be where they charged your card for a purchase you did not make and then kept the money or gave the products to someone.

After reading what happened to you that is a vendor that I would not use. If, by a long shot, their site or the cc processor was hacked one or both should be notifying all of their customers that this happened and telling them to check their bnkl accounts, notify their banks, take the right steps. Fraud protection does not cover you for simple and honest mistakes by a vendor, they expect that the vendor will take care of the problem. Your bank or credit card company will dispute the charges and take back the amount and credit it back to you in a case where the vendor is not cooperating and you can prove you did not order or get what you were charged for (and they cannot prove you did). Fraud coverage kicks into action and 'covers you' when actual fraud is determined, that the law has been broken and they only way you can recoup the loss is through that fraud coverage/insurance.

If it went as far as being taken care of by fraud insurance then I definitely believe fraud was committed, or else the money would have been returned in some other way. I definitely would not be using that vendor again or recommending anyone else do so. That is just not a risk worth taking. You had no reason to believe they would do this up until it happened but once it did chances are it would happen to you again or to others buying from them.

 

[bikini_kill]

If the issue of getting reputable credit-card processing is industry-wide, does that imply that using one's credit card at a local brick-and-mortar e-cig merchant is just as risky as an online purchase?

 

[cags]

I've noticed that in this and other similar threads that many people are saying things like
hackers wouldn't do xxx..
hackers do it this way...
it has to be the vendors...
it has to be the processors...

but unless you are a hacker how can you present these and similar statements as facts?
I think lots of stuff being written on this subject are just opinions...
just saying

 

[cags]

If the issue of getting reputable credit-card processing is industry-wide, does that imply that using one's credit card at a local brick-and-mortar e-cig merchant is just as risky as an online purchase?

the only time our CC # was stolen we believe was at a restaurant.........it was the only place the new card had been used. but it turned out kinda funny, we got a call from the CC Co. asking if we had purchased from mail order gap and old navy (we never shop there). so we said no and thought that was the end of it. then a few days later we get 2 packages..from old navy and gap. someone (store or thief) made a mistake in the ship to address. (we returned the boxes to the stores)

 

[stormwench]

I've noticed that in this and other similar threads that many people are saying things like
hackers wouldn't do xxx..
hackers do it this way...
it has to be the vendors...
it has to be the processors...

but unless you are a hacker how can you present these and similar statements as facts?
I think lots of stuff being written on this subject are just opinions...
just saying

As to what a hacker would do, not only a hacker knows that that's why we have what is called Cybersecurity - and there has been a great amount of work done in the filed investigating what hackers would do and motivation and so on. Sometimes its often working directly with hackers to learn what they do, why they do it, what they won't do, whats a risk worth the gain and so on. There are always going to be that someone that's different and does not fit the mold but in this day and age and trying to stay on top of what the next guy will come up with they have to work certain things they know, and learn from investigations.

When people say, and I said it, that the hacker is not going to waste his time to break into the data in a bank to get $60 out of one account - that's not an opinion - that's what hackers have said. Hackers who have been caught have often said that its not the money they are breaking into data for but the data itself. Maybe some of its is simple logic too. All things being equal and you had to steal money for some reason and knew if caught you were going to jail - do you steal the $10 or the $50? Would you really transfer several 1000 dollars out of a fe bank accounts after all the work to break in - which could be easily traced and even if your not caught taken back or compromise the data by making copies to be sold to the highest bidder and not risk being traced?

Okay, so we all have seen "The 100 Stupidest Criminals" and they always have some guy that gets caught over the 410 instead of taking the 50. But this stuff is what really happens not what people are of the opinion that it will happen.

I think most of these people are not saying that it 'has to be' but pointing out that that there certainly a number of different scenarios that it could be. Not every time that a bit of money goes wrong is it a hacker. Maybe people are starting to use that generically for anyone that does something with your money/credit card but if they do they are perhaps letting someone get away with theft or fraud.

Its not a hacker who takes a job in a store and then messes with someone credit card or uses the number for a second purchase that the customer did not make.

Its not a hacker if a company takes a payment and does not send the product.

Its not a hacker when a retailer or the company that processes the credit card transaction makes an error and someone is double charged or charge the wrong amount.

Its not a hacker when someone uses and exploit that lets them get your password and reads you email or sends out nasty messages on your social network account. Someone else left the door open and anyone no matter how limited their computer knowledge is walk sin and plays around.

It is a hacker when someone used electronic devices and methods to gain unauthorized access to data whether they directly use that data or benefit by the access.

I think what some people might be voicing opinions but they seem to be very clear that it is an opinion - how they feel about it or what they would do. As for those that have made statements ( not just here) pointing out that it might be something else than just what the person assumes and many people seem to assume that if it has to do with a cc it because something was hacked and that all hackers do all day is look for every dollar then can squeeze but of the little guy.

Business have made billing and payment errors, charged too much for something, charged on one account somethings that shuld have gone on another pretty much since humans started trading with other humans. Pretty much just honest mistakes and they did not need electronics for it to happen or someone to gain unauthorized access to their business records... Mistakes happen.

But now a days people see a unauthorized charge and they have immediately claim been hacked.

Sometimes people steal from others - its been happening forever I guess one could say. Someone gets your credit card number or a bank account number which they can easily in many ways without breaking into electronic data and withdraws money from your accounts or makes purchases with that cc number. People immediately claim it was a hacker or they were hacked when in reality a thief could have more easily written down your cc number for use later on.

Scamming the consumer has been going on for long before there were electronic transmission of money or electronic record keeping or even banks. There have been business that scammed the customer taken money or product and not given what they had agreed to in exchange. Paying for something and not getting what you paid for or (such as some of the better eBay ones) getting a picture of the product and not the product and other sorts of instances does not mean a hacker did it. You don't have to be a hacker to scam someone. Heck there are people that go to door scamming people but of money and it never comes near an electronic device.

Its like the monster in the closet. Now its the hacker in the computer. If something goes wrong as money is moved about people assume they have been hacked. Its less likely that is the case, and that's not a opinion but held up by statistics, then just one of the bad things that have been happening to people and their coin since the first one was stamped out and assigned a value.

If someone gets someone else's password chances are they did it without using any methods to hack an account and so on.

I am not defending hackers or saying that they are not one of the most troubling things in the world, but one needs to look at the most liable cause rather then call it being hacked. The OP for example - his warning was good - never store that information online and never store it in your computer (IE your browser) because someone could get it and use it against you. He said this because he went for the Zebra first and decided the site he dealt with had been hacked without any indication that it was. Given his assumption that the site he was dealing with was not to blame because of this 'hacker' taking advantage of both his bank account and the site he had used the credit card on. He did not even stop to consider that if some hacker really had broken in and gotten his credit card number why was it only a limited amount charged on just a vaping site. By thinking this way he brushed aside the other, and more likely possibilities. The most likely was just an honest mistake in which case he resolves it with the business and sure continuing business with the - they have proved that they are reliable when and issue is brought to them and there is no problem. But apparently that did not happen and he ended up having to be covered by his fraud protection but because he was blaming a hacker he would risk the same thing happening if was theft or a scam or fraud by continuing to use that vendor. There was really no evidence that the site was hacked or his account was (and if the site DID get hacked and said nothing to customers than I would not want to deal with them again for that reason) hacked into. What evidence he did have was that he was changed an amount he did not authorize and something he did not purchase. He notifid the company but had to evenly rely on fraud protection to give him his money back, but he will continue to use the vendor because they were not at fautt in his mind but it was caused by a 'hacker'.

Whether or not a hacker would bother to hack a site to get one cc number and charge some vaping supplies doesn't really matter a lot - except its a logical road people should go down when they start thinking their problem relies on being 'hacked'. When you realize that is the less likely scenario you can think abut what other possible things could be going on and make a well informed decision on whether you want to try using your cc at that vendor again.

 

[RedhatPat]

+1

A lil offtopic but here's my

Hackers create and crackers destroy. I love white hat hackers. I detest black hat hackers. I have even less respect for crackers. Best way to prevent more black hat hackers is to apply social pressure. These young wizkids need to learn that perpetuating a security incident is not a fast-track way into a lucrative IPSec career or to get the respect from other hackers.

Real hackers have jobs, careers, some not even in technology. They are collegeprofessors, business professionals, fathers and mothers. They use their real name. They don't hide behind cool sounding aliases, or live like Neo from the Matrix. If open-source were more prevalent in the vaping community, maybe we'd already have a no-wick/no-wire solution.

 

[El_tecolote]

My card was hit this morning at a gift shop in Oklahoma City in the amount of $400. I received an email notice from BoA and immediately called the cc fraud division. Although they immediately rectified the situation and issued a new card, it's ironic that my last vaping purchase was about ten days ago from OKC Vapes in Oklahoma City. Can't say they are at fault, but it is suspicious.

 

[Ansah]

This just happened to me as well.... Someone ran my card for a $1 charge (a test run no doubt). Thankfully, the transaction was flagged, so the card has been voided and I'm getting a new card in the mail.

I have no idea if it's vape vendor related or not, except that vaping is the only area in which I've ever typically made purchases outside the well-known realms of PayPal, Amazon etc., and vaping is the only area in which I've made purchases recently. I don't recall asking any vendor to "save" my info.

As mentioned already, I don't suspect an unscrupulous vendor so much as a hole somewhere in the data chain that enabled the info to get hacked. I always vet any vendors I use here at ECF first, and in terms of service/delivery have had no problems.