Credit Card Fraud?

[bunchesofun]

Once got a call from Citibank that my card was being used heavily in the Philippines. They canceled it and reversed all charges with no problem. The card had never left my hand. If I go to a restaurant and want to pay with a debit card I walk the card to the cashier, I do not let it out of my sight. These days everyone has a camera phone and it would only take a second for someone to snap a picture of the front and back of it.

[4hunters]

That happened to us too. I needed to make our final payment and the online payment screen was not working so I called Carnival and used my Debit card. 3 days later, I had two charges appear on my online bank statement. Both for online dating sites, one for single parents (I have no children) and one for senior dating (I am 40). My bank reversed the charges and I had to get a new debit card.

 

I normally do not give credit card information over the phone (this was the exception) and when I purchase online, I go through Paypal.

 

Sorry that happened to you as well. In my case I really believe a Carnival employee was to blame since that was the first time I'd ever given out my CC number over the phone (I had to because I was upgrading my cabin and that can't be done online). However, I have no proof and the issue was fixed by American Express before it was ever a problem so I just let it go.

 

Coincidence or not, I will never give my CC over the phone to Carnival again. ;)

[pauleydm]

Many possibilities here, but someone needs to investigate before pointing a finger.

 

A rep at Carnival would hopefully be bonded in order to be handling credit cards and substantial private information. Also, it would only take a couple of incidents before the facts would stack up against a credit card thief who is in such a position. It would be a dumb crime to start stealing numbers. Then again, many criminals are dumb as rocks. And some are quite brilliant.

 

This could be a logical fallacy known as Post Hoc -- "A" happened before "B," therefore "A" is the cause of "B." Just because the misuse of your credit card closely followed a Carnival transaction, doesn't mean Carnival or its rep had anything to do with it. There are many ways to get your number, some of which don't require any transaction at all. You can't even be sure that your credit card company wasn't hacked, and the same goes for every other company that has a copy of your credit card number.

 

I agree with Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc. But my bank, the parent company of the two dating sites and myself all investigated the situation. I spoke to a female Carnival rep in Miami, Florida. The charges were placed by a female with a Miami address. The caller used their address, and my phone number. I truly believe this is more than coincidence.:)

[Frank12]

13 cruises booked with the same credit card. Never a problem.

[pauleydm]

you're kiddin' me?!? sheesh. this doesn't sound very good. when did this occur? the OP's events occurred a week ago. i gave my credit card info to a new person (my pvp changed departments) just this a.m.

 

In November, we were making our final payment and the charges showed up 3 days later. The person I talked with was not my PVP. I have never had an issue with my CC when booking a cruise or paying off the balance. He was not available, so I spoke to someone I had never worked with before.:)

[martinchem]

Well a first for is, the charge card we use to make Carnival cruise purchases has just been hit with a $9.00 then $3,000.00 purchase that we had nothing to do with. Our M/C rep closed the account and set up a new account for us. Must be something to this.

[welldone60]

My debit card number was stolen last summer. I never found out for sure, but Carnival was one of the places I had recently used it. However, I had paid on my cruise online. Really, it could have been almost anywhere, but I made a list of places and Carnival was one of them.

 

Luckily, mine was caught almost immediately. I get a text anytime my card is used online, and someone tried to run $1.00 on a charity website. I called the bank immediately. The said that is how thieves see if the card is good. I'm glad I get texts, or it would have been a huge headache!

 

 

I like this. I am going to check with our bank and see if they could do this.

[vwhitaker]

Just curious if any of you have ever had problems with fraudulent charge attempts on your credit card soon after giving a Carnival rep your credit card number over the phone for a purchase?

 

I had just that experience a week ago with my American Express card. About an hour after giving a Carnival representative my CC number, Amex contacted me saying they had detected a charge attempt outside of the US (it was a separate charge from the one for Carnival). I confirmed with Amex that the charge was in fact fraudulent and they took care of it with no problems.

 

I've NEVER had anything like this happen before and am very careful with my personal information. I'm just wondering if it was just a coincidence or if Carnival is somehow lacking in properly securing their customer's information. I'm betting it was just a coincidence.... ;)

 

Yes, happened to me in April not long before we sailed on the Glory. Called to book an excursion and got a call from AMEX that my card had been compromised. It was a few days later though, not the same day that I got the call from AMEX. We had a thread going around about it back then, and it had happened to others, too. I do not know if it was CCL that compromised the card or if it happened somewhere else. Whoever got mine attempted to use it for online at Walmart.

[kicia]

My AMEX card was just compromised and I found out about it while I was on a Carnival cruise. Two charges were made a couple of days before I left on the cruise and another was made while I was on the cruise. All three charges were to TechWoot.com in Texas and it was about $3300 total. Who knows how or where it was compromised but it was taken care of quickly and the card cancelled with a new one issued.

[Redsfan]

last years cruise we had a bunch of fraud charges run up on our US Visa but later reversed as clearly we live in Canada, and purchases were made in different areas of the U.S. We know this was on Carnival's end because we live in Canada, and only have a U.S. Visa for Travel purchases, this card is not accepted in Canada. After we made our final payment charges appeared. It wasn't until we went to check in on our cruise that we were told our card had a hold put on it due to strange activity throughout the U.S. Only a couple of charges were legit (gas fill up in the Tampa area), and the others were made while on our Cruise. We had to grab a phone at Guest Services and talk to Visa and explain it's pretty hard using our CC in the U.S. while on a Caribbean Cruise LOL....see what happens this time we just made final payment again.

[Sh1035]

Just remember they like to take your card on a joyride for a small purchase.. If it works then go for the big stuff.

 

Trust me if they want it they can get get it. Make sure you are using a secure wired connection. Then again They could steal it in 5 seconds as you walk by with your wallet in your pants. No rocket science involved.

[BSQ]

Mine was the card i used for my S&$ account on my Freedom cruise out of FLL. A week later AmEx called to ask if i was in the UK. My card was on a shopping spree buying helicopter parts and computers.

 

Had a new card the next day.

[Banditswife]

Credit Card fraud is big business & no fun for the victim. I have been a victim myself, but never connected it to CCL. Sorry to hear about all these issues.

[jdyer09]

I have no.doubt that it could be from a carnival employee. I have noticed that their customer service is quite lacking. Tonight I called to pre pay my gratuities and after going through the auto attendant system a rep obviously picked up the phone by accident in the middle of an.intimate conversation with a male. When she finally realized what was happening and answered I asked for her supervisor after getting her name and she hung up on me. Cleary moral aptitude is not a quality of all carnival employees.

 

Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk 2

[jaxfl]

It is not just the cruise ships but anywhere you use your card. Mine has been used 3 times and each time was by a Bank of America Rep at either a call center or what was listed on the in company computers. Last time was in March 2011. I went to the brick office and had only the manager put in that I was traveling overseas, but not where I was going. After I got back there were charges on my card from India (not were I was) and I had not taken the card overseas either, I just used cash, the card was left in my office desk locked up. Of the 3 times, 2 of the bank employees are serving time in jail for fraud. The other managed to get by with a warning as they only gave the information out illegaly to a person over the phone saying they were me. There are now 7 alerts on my account and the only way anything can be changed is for me to personnaly go into a bank with 2 picture IDs and the manager has to make the change. BE CAREFULL with your cards.

[winddawn]

Just curious if any of you have ever had problems with fraudulent charge attempts on your credit card soon after giving a Carnival rep your credit card number over the phone for a purchase?

 

I had just that experience a week ago with my American Express card. About an hour after giving a Carnival representative my CC number, Amex contacted me saying they had detected a charge attempt outside of the US (it was a separate charge from the one for Carnival). I confirmed with Amex that the charge was in fact fraudulent and they took care of it with no problems.

 

I've NEVER had anything like this happen before and am very careful with my personal information. I'm just wondering if it was just a coincidence or if Carnival is somehow lacking in properly securing their customer's information. I'm betting it was just a coincidence.... ;)

I think I would call Carnival and report this.

[PAPERBKWRITER]

I got charged for a porn magazine subscription, caught it and it was cancelled. Went to the cops with enough information to catch the thief but they couldn't have cared less. Lesson: check your billing often; I'd suggest at least once a week.

[ib4cruzn]

Last outing on the Dream they kept charging me for the soft drink card.

 

It happened twice onboard and once after debarkation. Both honest mistakes, I'm sure.

 

Check your statements.

[carsastic]

I have worked in InfoSec for a very long time. Credit Card fraud is a big Biz and its going to continue.

While one can adhere to safe computing ( updates and antivirus/malware) , using caution on where and how you use your cards. It going to happen from time to time.

4 years ago the majority of fraud was thru external sources ( hacking) while it exists today , the internal security breaches are much more prevalent.

We recently did a penetration test for a very large well known co in South Florida, state of the art security systems . All we did was go to the employee parking lot, throw out some flash drives thru out the lot.

Within 12 mins someone found one, inserted it at there work desktop and we were logging information.

Vigilance in looking at statements , adhere to safe computing , being smart as to where you use cards and how u give out info is all one can do

If you are a victim of CC fraud a simple call to the company takes care of it..

[ib4cruzn]

I have worked in InfoSec for a very long time. Credit Card fraud is a big Biz and its going to continue.

While one can adhere to safe computing ( updates and antivirus/malware) , using caution on where and how you use your cards. It going to happen from time to time.

4 years ago the majority of fraud was thru external sources ( hacking) while it exists today , the internal security breaches are much more prevalent.

We recently did a penetration test for a very large well known co in South Florida, state of the art security systems . All we did was go to the employee parking lot, throw out some flash drives thru out the lot.

Within 12 mins someone found one, inserted it at there work desktop and we were logging information.

Vigilance in looking at statements , adhere to safe computing , being smart as to where you use cards and how u give out info is all one can do

If you are a victim of CC fraud a simple call to the company takes care of it..

 

Like! Thanks for the info.

[crazyfrazee]

While we were in Cozumel someone else was shopping in the UK buying office furniture with our card. We had given it to CCL.

[jerseyralph]

It is most likely just a coincidence. There are SOOOO many ways that credit card numbers are compromised. I actually work for a major credit card issuer and you would not believe some of the things we see. One of the craziest things is there is a computer program that has the algorithm that VISA & MC use to create CC numbers, and fraudsters literally just generate lists of potential CC #s and attempt to use them for small dollar charges online until they find ones that work at which point they go crazy and charge as much as possible before the card issuer realizes what’s happening and blocks it.

 

You are sooo right.....This is how the cc fraud game is played. A few years back we found 13 fraudulent charges/debits on a bank statement. They started with a very small amount ($12.00) and escalated over a 10 day period. We caught on when we reviewed our bank statement and the charges totalled about $2000. We called the bank and found out that someone had used the card that morning to fly from LA to Dallas/FW first class. Now we were missing $3000. FYI.... the bank replaced all of the moeny rather quickly. That being written.....look at your contracts. A bank can take weeks to months to replace money. Do not keep any more money in an account with a debit/credit card attached to it than you can afford to be without for a month or more.

 

LAST NIGHT I found a $200 charge had been made on one of our cards at a Lowes in East Point, Georgia. We have never been to East Point, Georgia. Someone manufactured a card using our number. This morning the Lowes rep told me that we are the 3rd call this month reporting this type of fraud.

 

This morning a bank rep told us the fraud issues are escalating.That thieves have the ability to easily get/generate all the info they need and now it has become a profitable home-based business. Our card was cancelled this AM and most of the money in that account was moved to a savings account until we are comfortable that the matter is resolved.

 

FYI.... our local police traced back the phone numbers related to the $3000 missing dollars to Brooklyn, NY. The file was forwarded to the Brooklyn DA's office. We never heard anything from anyone ever again.

 

Be safe and read your statements!

[ib4cruzn]

You can tell if your card has been compromised by the first few transactions.

 

Typically they will be small amounts like Itunes and such. This means they are checking to see if the number is still open.

[DEL67]

Mine was stolen recently. They bought 3 Jet Blue tickets to the Dominican Republic, one of which was in my name.

 

The credit card company did not notice it, but I did since I monitor my accounts a couple of times a week. In addition to notifying the the credit card company, I called Jet Blue since the confirmation number was on the charge and I was really annoyed. Hopefully Jet Blue did not let them board, but who knows?

[okwriter]

Just curious if any of you have ever had problems with fraudulent charge attempts on your credit card soon after giving a Carnival rep your credit card number over the phone for a purchase?

 

No. Never.