There’s nothing like having the phone ring early in the morning, unless it’s looking at the caller-id and seeing it’s your credit card company. Needless to say, the person on the other end introduced herself as being from the Fraud Protection department.
I probably should have been properly paranoid and called them back, but she had enough information to convince me that she was legitimate (either that or a very good scammer). After we’d established mutual bona fides, she asked me the big question:
“Did you use your card to pay 399 South Korean Won for a website named ‘First Date’?”
Nope. And neither had my son or my wife.
And actually, neither had the thief – they’d tried, but “Verified by Visa” kicked in and they were unable to answer the question it asked, so the charge was declined and activated the fraud prevention system, leading to this morning’s call.
Naturally, this was the card I use for all my automatic payments (so I’m careful not to use it at gas stations or other places where skimmers are likely to live); fortunately, I have downloaded copies of my last few statements handy and can update all my accounts when the new cards arrive. It’ll make a great excuse not to do something more productive.
On a brighter note, the first thing I saw when I logged onto Facebook today was a congratulatory post to Luba Cherbakov (one of my peers in my last group at IBM) on her appointment to IBM Fellow; when I looked at the press release, I found that Ron Fagin, a fellow member of Shir Hadash, had also been appointed as an IBM Fellow. Well-deserved congratulations to both of them! (I wonder if the food at the ceremony was Kosher for Passover.)