I am a victim of the Equifax breach. My credit cards get used by more people than I use them myself. I have had 3 in the past 6 months get hacked. Spent the good part of yesterday straightening out my latest hack when a mystery package showed up on my door with my name on it and someone else’s address. Found $500 worth of charges on the card that hasn’t been used for months and sits in a file cabinet. All of my cards are on auto pay so I spent hours going into each card’s website and adding alerts to each. I would dump most of them if it wouldn’t hurt my credit rating. I have accumulated too many over the years every time a special deal came up. Open this card and get $200 and deals like that.
I wonder if I am the only one or is this common? I barely use mine and it is usually the ones I don’t use at all that get hacked.
Twice in 27 years.
so far, never. I was also affected by the Equicrap hack.
- I call up AmEx often and request a full list of cards against my name
- do the same with credit bureaus
- monitor bank accounts via apps
- you can block delivery or use of credit facilities with the exception of your home address
- my mail man knows what happened and he never leaves stuff on the porch
I think once.
Keep your oldest credit lines (at least 2) and close your younger ones, this will have little to no impact to your overall credit score, assuming you don’t carry large balances.
Secure those oldest credit lines, you may want to go so far as to ask for them to issue you completely new numbers. Use long and complex passwords for these accounts and minimize the devices that have access to them at all. Tell them up front you have concerns around fraud, it’s a different type of request for a new credit card number.
Secure your email account and phone number. Use long and complex passwords here as well, and again, minimize access. Call your mobile phone company to add pins and any additional security around changing SIM cards.
Shred EVERYHING. Anything that has your name, address, phone number, and account number should go to a shredder and not in the normal trash or recycling.
Always be suspicious of online retailers, try to stick with established websites with good security histories. Try to avoid older or smaller sites that have unknown security histories, or retailers with know poor security.
Use a password manager and try to use strong, complex, and unique passwords for your most important accounts. Credit cards, bank accounts, email and mobile phone are at the top of this list.
forgot to mention this earlier:
use paypal as a middleman when making online purchases.
Had one bogus credit charge turn up one time — someone buying a fancy meal in Italy.
And I’ve heard that if you get a cold call, never say the word “Yes” because they’re recording that and use it to claim you gave permission for whatever. Teh Google supports that warning:
Definitely get rid of the cards you don’t use. If it did affect your score it would be temporary anyways. Then get new numbers for the cards you keep. I am no expert but that should do it, right?
One time, about eight years ago. Happened the day after using my card at the pump of a small gas station in a shady part of town. Immediately reported my card as stolen, and the card company removed the bogus charge.
Cancel cards you don’t use, lol auto pay? look at your bills before paying.
Most credit card ‘hacks’ come from using the same password on some low security site like forums and then they just take your email and try the same password for your bank etc…
Maybe happens once every few years, last time a few months ago their charges didnt even go through and my card was instantly put on hold for out of country attempt.
Hardly ever since I got the first one in the 70’s.
The cards I have all let me lock the card so no charges will go through unless I unlock it.
I use a password manager. Every financial account has its own unique complex radom generated password.
I have cards that I have accumulated through those special deals. I use them once a year to prevent their closing from no use. That has happened to me in the past. But I keep those locked. No autopay except on the two I use and monitor.
If you have many cards and close some the part that may hurt your credit rating for a long time is the decrease in the total available credit you have. One of the factors that is used for rating is the percentage of your total available credit that is in use at any one time. So, if closing some un-used cards decreases available credit by 20%, for example, that can have a long lasting affect of your score.
Maybe 3 or 4 times in last 25 yrs or so.
One joyrider racked up more than $5 K in Uber rides all over No. Cal.
Somebody else apparently left me at home while attending a Guns and Roses concert in Chicago.
Really HACKS me off.
Yep. To protect your friends, remember to use BCC when emailing a group.
https://www.google.com/search?&q=use+BCC
Otherwise you leave all those emails in clear text, and when someone hacks your computer they get all those emails to play with.
The strangest thing is that the items ordered were delivered to my address. Who bothers to hack a card then send the bogus orders to the card owner. I am missing something here. Right now I am trying to get through to Best Buy to return 2 items and to tell them of my problem. Yesterday it was Nike. Trying to get to CS these days is brutal.
I have had at least one credit card since the 1990's.
I've only had one credit card hacked once.
My credit card company sent me out a new one, and I didn't get stuck with any charges.
I guess I've been pretty lucky in that respect. 
This might sound overkill, But I use a whole different computer that was specifically built for business use so outside of work e-mails, bills etc, it generally remains dormant with an e-mail address that’s not tied to anything with its only purpose being business related.
I got hacked once on PayPal via a mysterious donation to a Catholic foundation on Poland…$1,500 USD! I got refunded but guess what… PayPal kept their share of currency exchange fee, so I lost almost $100 in the process.
Later I found out that 3 more accounts in different sites were hacked as well, all sharing the similar password.
3 years ago a dude bought for $1300 of vaping stuff with my cc and $50 at a florist for his girlfriend 
Once a coupla years ago, debit card not credit, but I don’t do any banking online at all, so no password, no nuttin’ except for the “security code” on the back of the card. Was right about the time GB had a breach (and that was the card I had on-file with them).
Tried ordering from Amazon, got a notice of nonpayment and to select a new card or whatever, checked extensively to make sure it was legit, then at Amazon’s urging went to my bank to find out.
Indeed, the card was blocked because of suspicious activity. Only a handful of charges went through, an assload tried but were rejected, so yay bank!
Only inconvenience was having to wait for a new account/card to arrive, but that was a week or less, I think.
No problems since.
And yeah, PP allows at least one layer of abstraction, but I think there’s a way to disable the link to a card/acct unless/until you specifically allow it, do your thang, then disallow it again.
Did you notice any strange vehicles on your road lately?
Any more people walking the dog in front of your place?
Random strangers looking at your house?
Porch pirates.
They track “their” order and will try to steal the package off of your land.