Have You Checked Your Balance Lately?
WHAT’S the latest craze that’ll have the rogues and ruffians buzzing all season?
Grabbing your credit/debit card information “in transit.”
They just snatch that shit during the card verification process while you’re making a purchase at the grocery store:
Hannaford said 4.2 million debit- and credit-card numbers were exposed between Dec. 7 and March 10. There was a report of fraudulent activity on 1,800 unique cards as of Monday, but a running tally of all fraud associated with the case is not being kept…
[Portland Press Herald: Data stolen from Hannaford during transit]
Apparently it was a real “no one could have anticipated the breaching of the levees” moment:
In [a grocery store point-of-service] transaction … the card information does not have to be encrypted because it is in a private network. But it is supposed to be transmitted over an encrypted line.
If I read that right, the information was compromised after the swiping of a card but before transmission. OMG! THE HACKING IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE STORE.
Your Montag is no security expert, but it seems to me that an organization that gives prospective employees a personality test to determine what they would do if a friend or co-worker stole ten dollars from the till, might have had stricter safeguards in place for credit card data.
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Stump Lane 
That’s why you always use credit, never debit. That way it’s not your money and you immediately get it back when you dispute it.
I once had my debit card stolen and taken on a three state spending spree. I had all but a $50 fee back within a week. Results may vary depending on your bank I suppose.
But what you say is correct, when these companies fail to verify the legitimacy of the transaction, it’s not your money. Except for that $50, fuckers.
PS: Fellow travelers, when someone uses your information to obtain a fraudulent line of credit, they have not STOLEN your IDENTITY. Abstract electronic currency hasn’t dehumanized us that much has it? And it also is NOT YOUR FAULT just because you didn’t cross-shred all of your three-a-week mail in credit card offers. Fuck those corporate credit fuckers. The pain-in-the-ass of getting it off your credit score is yours, however. Fucking credit-score tabulating fuckers.
(Don’t be surprised if that PS shows up as a post sometime. I been meaning to write one like that.)