Monday, April 26, 2010

Scamming us 5 dollars at a time

We received a letter from our bank asking us to call them regarding suspicious activity on our credit card (VISA prompted the request to my bank). Our credit card was also put on hold.

The bank said VISA highlighted 6 recent charges. I was able to verify 5 of them (groceries, gift purchases on Amazon, a rug). All but one was under 20 dollars. But the last charge didn't look familiar. It was for $4.91 and billed by a company called digiquality.com. I looked up the web site and found a company selling screen savers. Not something I would buy, and my wife or kids didn't remember buying anything (my 8 year old said, "um, I don't even know how to buy something online".) I even looked for new screen savers on the PC but found nothing.

I called the phone number on the web site but got a message to use a support email. Not very promising.

So, I did some google searches and found out this is indeed a scam. Looks like it is an outfit that makes small charges, I assume hoping most people won't notice.

This was the most interesting and detailed link on the scam.

I have no idea whatsoever how they obtained our credit card number. We cancelled the card of course and will get a new one (what a hassle). I'll submit a fraud report just to get another one on the record.

A few interesting things to note:

1. We really should review our credit card in more detail each month
2. Interesting that this organization with access to credit cards is scamming five dollars at a time. They must really make it up in volume.
3. I have to assume that it was this specific line item that flagged VISA. My bank said VISA won't tell you why they flagged something (I asked). But the other items were small amounts and/or from local retailers. So I also have to assume there has been enough reports to get this on VISA's radar.