I hate to be "that guy" but it's Cypress, Ben...

Yea, I saw one show up for ACCUDATA which is a pre-auth company. The time the charge came in I was walking down the street with my Mom and surely was not ordering anything. It was for some low amount $1.59 which I'm sure they were thinking I would overlook and they would know the card was good then.

With that huge TJ Maxx break in along with others, keep a extra close eye on your card for a while.

Dude who doesen't look at the credit card statement and match it up to what you spent?

@Nemesis_Enforcer: It would surprise you. It's scary.

If you mean the country, it's Cyprus. The tree is cypress. Unless the fraudsters used the incorrect spelling.

Ben - please feel free to delete this.

I always check over my statement w/ my wife. Usually it'll go "how did we spend so much $$$ this month? (again) Then we'll start adding up all the gas bills for the car and realize that 1/3 of the bill is just that.

$29.99 is way to much to pay for Cypress Hill tunes.

Clickable, maybe they live in a tree!

:D

Wow, I should clearly stop drinking my lunch...

All apologies, Ben.

I have a college buddy in Limassol. He and his family own an aluminum company and the Four Seasons Hotel, so I think he's the one responsible for this. I'll call him, that malaka.

My credit card company called me even before this posted on the card management website and asked whether the charge was valid. I told them it wasn't, they cancelled my card and sent me a new one.

You know, if you're a scammer in Cypress, I imagine the only reason you would choose $29.99 instead of $2,999 (or higher) is to try and stay under the radar, right?

I want to know how these shady companies get away with this. I'm a small merchant who runs my own charges, and if I start doing anything bad my processor can reverse any of the charges and sue me. In fact I can get my account shut down with a small run (maybe 1%) of chargebacked transactions. So......... would it be out of line to shut these guys down after, oh, say, the first 3000 chargebacks?

I'm not saying credit card theft is a surprise, but I'm sure as hell astonished when a bad, bad company can continue to process credit cards, like, say, most of the Brooklyn camera stores.

Since I don't keep a balance on my cards I'd notice this for sure!

@B: Yeah, you'd have to be Insane in the Membraaaaaaane.

I started using Quicken to download my credit card info on a quasi-daily basis. It helps keep my spending in chack (no surprises at the end of the month) and should help me spot any fraudulent charges pretty quickly.

I'm not pushing quicken - I think that it just pays to keep track of spending on the credit card during the month.

I had this happen to my Washington Mutual account. WAMU was very good about crediting the charge right away, and issuing a new card.

VIP Tune (viptune.com) mentions the fraudulent charges on their site. They blamed their 'affiliates'. Even their warning was a bit fishy, as they did not have the warning in text on their site, but rather as a graphic incorporated in their header.

So you wanna commit credit card fraud, and live large
a big house, 5 cars, you're in charge

I had this same thing happen to me as well! It's the first time I've ever had any issue with something like this come up.

From my Visa Signature statement:
Transaction Date: 07/06/2007
Posting Date: 07/09/2007
Merchant: VIP TUNE
Amount: $19.99

I noticed it on the same day, called up Visa and disputed it...They transferred me to their fraud department who took my info, immediately reversed the charge and overnighted a new card to me. They indicated that the card # was used and that there was no physical card swipe.

Looking over the 'net, it appears that this is quite rampant. Seems to only be Visa cards, but I've seen cards in NZ, AU, US hit so far. Sounds like a major security breach of some form. There's a possible connection to Amazon.com, but nothing concrete yet.

Where's the media on this one? This one looks like it's a pretty big breach.

This same thing happened to me with a company called Shopper's Discount. It was for $9 so it was very under the radar.

When I called my bank to contest it, the guy at Wells Fargo said he deals with that company at least 20 times a week.

Wait I'm confused. Are we talking about Cyprus the island or Cypress the city in SoCal? Because if it is Cypress the city in SoCal, the local tv stations should be all over this.

It's Cyprus, as in the foreign country.

Thats weird because about 3 years ago or so i was stationed in Korea for the US Army and i got one of these charges on my normal credit/debit card from my credit union. I am not sure of the town, but the place was in Cyprus. I talked to my bank and they gave the money back pretty painlessly so i never really checked into it. Then a little time later i get a letter saying that my information had been compromised at a merchant i had used my card at and to take precautions, i changed all my accounts.

@Nemesis_Enforcer:
 
I don't check thoroughly, like, actually verifying the exact store and amount and date and stuff. I know I should, but I don't. What I do do, though, is skim through the names of the stores and see if they're familiar.

So, basically, yeah, if you were to steal my credit card and only charge reasonable amounts of money at the same stores I usually shop at anyway, nope, I'd never notice.

But, hey, it's better than nothing, right? ;) What are the odds of that happening?

"Affiliates". So easy to blame when fraud happens, but so ripe for fraudulent behavior that this excuse really isn't acceptable whether or not it's actually the case.

If you have a lot of different charges on your CC statement, and you're already tired from paying multiple bills, it's pretty easy to just skim it, even accidentally. "Online service, Netflix, Amazon, grocery, yeah yeah yeah same stuff every month, why am I looking at details here when they're always the same -- skimmmmm." Be careful.