Hi! I was alerted Friday evening by a text from my credit card, Wells Fargo, that a charge was taken out using my card online at Walmart. One charge of $500 was stopped because I replied with No when the text asked me if I made it. Unfortunately the first charge of $400 made it through. Card has been cancelled and a new one on the way.
As I was filling out the police report, I let them know that I had just stopped off at a fast food place about three hours prior to the fraudulent charges. Apparently the drive-thru cashier took pictures of my card, then proceeded to go to walmart.com to make those purchases, according to the investigating officer who went down to look at their cameras.
It got me thinking, how could this have been avoided? Yes I know, cooking at home and all that, which we do 5 or 6 days out of the week. It was Friday, the family was hungry and I was burnt out and wanting something quick while on the way home, so, one of those Mexican fast food places sounded good.
I'll be getting my new card next week. I was thinking of hiding my name on the card, seeing as they'll need that when entering all the information at checkout. Would that work? I really don't know what to do to prevent this in the future. Ordering online seems the safest but not every place has that option.
What can I do to prevent this? Or is this just a calculated risk we take when using a credit card?
Credit card info stolen. What steps to take in the future?
byu/workinfast1 inCreditCards
Posted by workinfast1
10 Comments
Honestly, don’t go crazy over it. This is why using credit cards are so important. You did everything right!
Calculated risk, I’d just move on. It’s honestly surprising that you got an explanation of what happened – so surprising to me that I wonder if it’s even true. Cards are typically skimmed and then used much later, with random timing, in an effort to mask the location of the skimmer. It’s possible of course that you were hit by the amateur working at the fast food place, but that’s going to be rare.
Honestly, tough to protect yourself 100%. I don’t think covering your name won’t help much. Best thing would be to not use it on sketchy websites or stores. You can keep your card locked and unlock when you need to use it. Also set up push notifications for all transactions and stay vigilant.
Sucks that happened but looks like they caught the perp and hopefully the bank refunded that $400. As far as preventive measures, it seems like you took the steps already with the text alert. And despite your info getting stolen, a credit card is still a safer option to use than debit.
I don’t have much advice but keep doing what you’re already doing. And don’t go to sketchy fast food places anymore.
You were just unlucky. The issue isn’t with anything you did. You unfortunately happened to come across a criminal.
No need to make any changes. I mean, sure – you can maybe use the apps or not use the drive through and pay at the counter so the card never leaves your possession. But I wouldn’t make that change unless it’s no less of a hassle for you.
That said – most fast food places have fairly good deals when you use the app. So there is that.
This is exactly why you use credit cards over debit cards. A debit card could have drained or over-drafted your account. Yes, you have some administrative headache to deal with, but your financial situation is not impacted.
Some drive throughs hold the tap/chip reader out the window. I just paid that way last week when paying with my phone.
Use Apple wallet. that way absolutely no one in customer service gets a hold of your card to either read or preserve it.
If it’s a national restaurant/fast food chain, they probably have an app, and you can probably use that to make payments. You still get any dining rewards from the credit card, since you use that to put money on their apps, but they never see or touch your credit card.
In this particular instance, scratching out the number is kind of the safest option, provided you have the number somewhere anyways, which depending on how you store it may be more secure or less. You can also destroy the magnetic stripe either with an extremely strong magnet or just scratch it to all hell. The less destructive method is to just use an opaque tape or something that you’ll know if it’s been tampered with.
The other alternative is to get a card without any info on the card itself like the Apple card, though it still has a magnetic stripe on it.
for fast food, order in the app. there’s also better deals and you get loyalty points.