AMEX getting hacked...all of my cards. Anyone else?

[Mike Islander]

Over the last 6 months both of my AMEX cards have been hacked probably 6 times. Anyone else? What's the culprit? I can't find a common denominator in my records. Maybe a keyboard sensor installed on one of my PCs?

Does seem to possibly happen after I get fuel at a local gas station that's 10 year old pumps, or stuff from Dollar General, but not always, so how to heck are they doing this?

 

[ODB]

gas pumps have skimmers and dollar generals have people who need dollars. Pretty simple.
I used a brand new Amex card once to buy the wife fancy chocolates. Got scammed...called the chocolate company and told them they have an insider problem, they said, nope, not us, you are wrong...

6 months later I get a letter telling me they had an internal compromise of their data...I called them and said, “No shit?”

 

[Yellowknife]

We had a VISA stolen recently. Got the new one last week and entered it back into several accounts that are set up for re-occurring bill payments. Within 30 min it had been stolen and shut down again.

We strongly suspect a compromise to one of accounts we have it permanently on file with. No idea which one yet, but we hadn't had a chance to use it for anything else. Do you have something similar set up?

 

[MuleyFever]

No AMEX issues but had my card number stolen 2 years in a row right after applying in Nevada draws.

 

[Sawfish]

Get LifeLock. Best $10 per month card theft protection you can get. AMEX security told me that mail theft was a major source of card number theft. Be sure the card companies have your contact info. (cell phone).

 

[LostArra]

I'm not sure Life Lock can protect you from credit card theft besides I've never been charged a dime from the few fraudulent card hits I've taken over the years. Just a pia to get the card replaced.

My tech buddy told me the only way to absolutely protect your credit card is to not ever use it. If you've used it especially online its vulnerable to the bad guys.

Discover used to have this neat little widget for online purchases. It gave you a random cc number that was good only one time. They dropped it because no one ever had to pay for a fraudulent purchase anyway.

 

[Ray]

Read an article over the weekend where investigators found the software had been installed on the POS system inside the gas station. All pump readers processed through the main POS system. These locations mainly did not have updated chip readers at the pumps. This was across several large gas station franchises in the southeast and southwest. The investigator's recommendation was to never use a gas pump that had not been updated to chip reader system. That data is not as accessible through the POS main system inside the store.

From an experience here in Anchorage several years ago, the criminal has to slide a bogus card loaded with code through the mag stripe reader. That code self loads into the POS system and stores card numbers and PINs. A few days later the criminal comes back in and slides another bogus card through the mag stripe reader to download the stored data. At the time many vendors did not ask for the CCV code and it made for easy online purchases. The older the POS system, the easier it is to exploit.