How on earth does someone spend $7500 on iTunes?? **PLEASE READ EVERYONE**

So as those on my FB will know, last night, I found out that 'someone [insert chain expeletives here] has stolen my Visa Debit Card details from somehwere (I still have the card itself) and used them to purchase repeatedly from iTunes and some other "Segpay" thing for amoutns around $7,700!! :o:o:o


This is VERY annoying, and quite frankly, has shaken me a bit. I run a business, I do a LOT of online purchasing and by extension, a LOT of people 'have' my credit card details, although most of my purchases are through PayPal, some are not.

Now I am posting in this section and not the Boo Hoo section, because, although this is the BIGGEST Boo Hoo for a LOOONG time, I have also learned a very valuable (and to be honest, a freaking obvious lesson I should have already known had I not been so naive...).

Sitting here at midnight last night after speaking with my bank (Another reason I choose ANZ - for their 24 HOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE, which meant I caught this and reported it just hours after it happened) I was very defeated. I had a totally CRAPPOLA day yesterday, dealing with a thief of another mother, and this was the last thing I needed.
So that got me to thinking - why is it I am being given this dilema? What lesson am I missing? What HUGE lesson have I missed the point of that the universe has seen fit to feel the need to suplex me with this?

Well, I recently had my mum's estate settle, and the cash amount form the settlement has been deposited into my everyday account, which just happens to be my VisaDebit account. (LIGHTBULB)

WHY oh WHY (!?) would I think it was a good idea to leave such a huge quantity of money in a CREDIT CARD account, when I give out my details on a DAILY basis ONLINE??

:wall::wall::wall:


SO: My Lesson of the Day I would like to share with you all is this:

DO NOT KEEP ALL YOUR MONEY IN A CREDIT OR DEBIT CARD ACCOUNT.
ESPECIALLY IF YOU DO ONLINE SHOPPING.

Being a Visa DEBIT card, had the money NOT been in that account (or at least had it simply had a few hundred dollars for day to day expenses in it) 'they' [insert more chain expletives here] would not have been able to defraud me of almost EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS, and the ability to take a HELL of a lot more than that from the same account.


So please, think carefully about how you configure your banking and your everyday accounts - I know we have a couple of linked accounts but they cannot be accessed from the credit card numbers - and I know where I will be keeping all but housekeeping money from now on. ;)
Hopefully if I can prevent this happening from just one more person, then it is a lesson well learned and well shared. :rolleyes:

Oh hon how awful :( ANZ are usually pretty good with this stuff... will they sort it out?

Limey, big hugs. What is your bank going to do about returning your funds to you?

TBH, I wouldn't have thought of it like that. Thanks for that. My debit account is my every day account as well. All payments from c'link/tax etc go into that account.
I'll have to remember to transfer them straight to my other account & only move what I need when needed.

Can you get your money back?
So sorry they did this to you. I hope it can be traced xx

Hugs hun thats terrible, I hope its all sorted out soon.

oh my! That is horrible- you poor thing!
Is there anyway they can track who it is? because when you register with ITUNES on an iphone, itunes will obviously need the mobile number that the apps will go to.
I would assume this would be the case with itunes on the computer- they would need an email address.
Hope this makes sense and you get your money back!!

some people out there are truely horrible. what gives them the right to steal someone elses well earned money!!!! grrrrr makes me so mad

They tell me it is fairly obvious they are fraudulent transactions - simply by the volume of them - they are ALL for $189 and $59 just over and over again. And since I still have the card...

But the Fraud people will be able to find out where they originated, and it is doubtful they will be in Australia, which ameks it even more obvious. I think it has been helped by the fact I called STRAIGHT away when I found out, and called again this morning to hassle them about it lol

But they tell me that if they are fraud, then I will have the moeny back within about 5 days, and I have to fill in some stat dec form or something within 2 weeks, otherwise they will be reversed and I have to wear it. So yeah, should all be sorted fairly easily I hope, and they new card they send me will be a COMPLETELY different number, not just a new expiry.

OMG. I can't believe it. I am so afraid of bank fraud, not that i have a lot of money in there, but still.

I hope it is ALL recovered and you get it back.

Itunes? They spent it at itunes of all online stores? they are *d!cks*

True TD. Imagine the nappies I coulda got for 7 grand??? lmao

Sorry LS. I hope it all works out & the money comes back easily.

Oh you poor thing!! I really hope it's not much of a hassle to get your new card and your money back :( Thanks for the lesson though, I will remind DH - he's got 4 linked accounts and his 'normal' one (attached to his debit card) is usually empty the day after payday as he squirrels all his cash away into the places it needs to be for direct debits/bills/savings/whatever.

*hugs*!!! :(

Hugs Lime....hope everything gets sorted and you get all the money back.

Oh wow, that's awful. I so hope it is sorted out quickly for you.

Ouch LS, glad you caught it pretty early. We are with ANZ too and have a visa debit, but we set it up separately to our other accounts and only put money into it if we are going to buy something online that same day. I nearly did transfer the money I got from family tax this week into it, to keep it separate from our main account and decided not to. Glad I did now. I used my visa debit heaps online, if I can't paypal.

thanks for your tips:) so sorry this has happened. I am glad the banks on your side, JUST another tip..... lower your daily spending amount ours is set to 2000 only so if i need more not that it happends often, i have to go to a bank or call them. This way im safer if something should happen. I too was once caught out. Also my credit card is only a low amount

I have to say, I did have a little ironic laugh - we had used the daily limit on the card yesterday mroning buying tyres, so had they tried to use the actual card itself, it would have been denied, but as it was the numbers, it isn't affected by the daily card limit.
I am sooo glad I have a debit card and NOT a credit card though! That would have been bad.

oh wow. that is a tough gig. urgh! we had a much smaller amount frauded from our CC and man it was a real PITA and also TBH felt like quite a violation of my personal space. urgh!

it's good to hear that the matter should be resolved fairly easily for you...albeit with a few phone-calls and run around hassles :hug:

Oh honey, how stressful for you. FWIW I'm with ANZ and have had a couple of fraudulent transactions on my credit card account in the past. The first was a car park chain that charged me again for parking there 6 months later. I had to fill in a form for ANZ and they sorted it out, it did take about 30 days though. The second time they picked up that my card was being used for online gambling and called me (the Falcon at work LOL). They canceled my card straight away and I had to fill in the form, they had a new card to me within a couple of days and the money credited back to my account within a week or so. So hopefully, it will be worked out quickly for you, in my experience ANZ is really good with this sort of stuff :hug:

Omg LS that's horrible! :hug:I hope you can recover every cent and those pigs get everything they deserve!
And thank you for the tip I'll make sure we're much more careful in the future.

Limeslice, I'm surprised ANZ didn't pick it up earlier. A few months ago I got a call from their fraud department telling me that someone in the US was trying to buy Itunes with my card and they picked it up as a suspicious transaction straight away. I have used my credit card for online shopping too so it sounds like both you and I have had our card details swiped somehow or somewhere along the line. Probably from the same fraudsters. Don't ANZ have a guarantee when it's deemed to be fraudulent they re-imburse the funds? Hope it all gets sorted out for you asap. I didn't have to do anything, they cancelled my credit card and issued me a new one straight away.

They must be scamming a few people like that - another forum I'm one had a thread where someone had their itunes account hacked and heaps charged to their card. I think I might have to go and check mine out to make sure. I really hope it is sorted quickly for you :hug: it makes you feel ill doesn't it, knowing that someone has effectively stolen your money.

Ouch! That beats any of the things we've been hit with... but we've also learned the hard way. We have one account that has no cards attached at all. That's where all of our money goes into - and then smaller amounts filter out from there to our other accounts. That set up was after being caught out by an ATM card skimming thing. We lost $1200.

We've also had encounters with credit card theft (that was a pain to deal with!) and a couple of times that our credit card details have been used fraudulently. The first we've known about it each time was when the credit card company's fraud department contacted us - so it's really surprising that they didn't pick up such excessive use of itunes. Even if it is frequently used online I would imagine it would trigger alarms somewhere. These days we keep the credit limit very low (more for our benefit than anything else - so we can always pay it off) and we've actually managed to trigger the fraud alarms with our own purchases a couple of times.

I hope it gets sorted very quickly. Having that much money tied up in fraud investigations wouldn't be fun.

BW

LS, that must be an awful feeling. I think it's something we all hope won't happen to us. It's great news that you are with a helpful bank at least, I had a friend who's account was frozen after being a victim of fraud and they didn't get access back for over 2 weeks. Another good reason to not have all your money in one account I guess - who could live without any money for 2 weeks!!

Thanks for the interesting advice hun, I have to say I hadn't thought about that either - whoops! All the best for money back in 5 days.

WOW that is amazing. Great news that you will be getting your money back.
I would never have thought about that at all. But then again this is NEVER any money in my bank accounts lol

Oh LS, how horrible this must be for you, and a pita too! I hope you get your money back quickly, and the thief gets whats coming to them!

Thanks for the heads up too, much appreciated.

x

Erk, that must feel horrible :hug: hope it all gets sorted quickly for you.

Thanks for the advice, although we don't have a debit card, we have a CCard & this has made me feel a bit nervous!

Lime that sucks. I hope you get your money back and soon! That amount would be awful to lose :(

Did you hear on the news that there is a massive wide scale fraud going on. International gangs are paying shop attendants to put skimming devices in the card readers (or replace them with dummy ones) and a camera in the roof over the counter so they get both the card encryption and your pin!

I'm only going to sign from now on!

Raven - I heard that too and I only ever sign with my debit card for that very reason.

Lime - I hope you get your money back soon. Thanks for the tip though, I have reduced my daily limit in my online banking.

Yeah I saw that on the late news last night too. It's very worrying that these people can just 'buy' store owners like that. The scam I read about on the other forum was where they use a program to randomly select numbers and try to put through very small purchases of $1 or $2 and if they succeed with the small amounts then they go in for the kill with larger amounts. They might try 10s of 1000's of numbers before they get a hit, but they are running computer software that does it all for them apparently. The people caught in this scam only notice the large amount, but when they look further into it they also see a random small amount too.

~Raven~ - im signing from now on because of that too

LS - that sucks! Im glad ANZ are sorting it out for you though, I might even swap to ANZ they seem like a really good bank. Almost $8000 on itunes i cant believe it! I wish i just had $1000 to pay my bills lol, hope these fraudsters get whats coming to them!

Geez that is awful

*off to check online banking*

Apparently there has been a big thing in Melbourne - they have caught people paying off service station and convenience store employees to tamper with EFTPOS machines and put in spycams to get your pins etc.... We were in Melbourne a couple of months ago for a month...maybe that's how they got my card details?
Just dodgey either way!

Thanks for not saying 'der' everyone! lol Feeling rather stupid over here I must say! Not like I sent all my life savings to Nigeria but stupid none the less :rofl:

Your definately not stupid, it could have happened to anyone. :hug:

Aww Lime :hug: Heva's right, it could have happened to anyone (does, in fact).

The scary thing about signing on CC is that not everyone checks the signature. I have a few customers who have written in the sig section 'please check drivers license' - if you don't ask for it, they know you're not checking ;)

I can't believe shop attendants are allowing themselves to be bought like that, I guess it's kind of naive of me but I can't believe anyone would do that :(

Yeah, I suppose though if you are student or middle aged and working at 7-Eleven, $40k can seem like a lot of money!

Lime, they will try everything they can to try to get money from people, even the most careful of people can still be defrauded :hug:

LimeSlice, stay on the case with ANZ. I haven't had dealings with the fraud dept, but another high up department and it has taken them 10 months to sort out the issue. Hope it gets sorted for you quickly hon.

Corelly x

Only ever signing with a debit card is going to be impossible if you happen to shop at Woolies. :rolleyes:

I don't have a debit card (it's all EFTPOS or credit mastercard here), but with the way we have been caught out with credit card theft, the signature is actually WAY more secure, despite what people would have you believe. Especially as it leaves a paper trail that can be verified later on if there are issues.

We never found out how our ATM card details were skimmed - but we suspect a dodgy service station attendant and a security camera. It's not only at ATMs where you should hide the keypad from prying eyes (cameras) while entering the number!

BW