Security Wizard

At the age of 66 and being in the electronic security industry for 30 years, I have just had my first fraudulent transaction experiences with my personal debt card.  During the last two weeks I have had six transactions, totaling about $1000.00 charged to my bank account.  The good news is that my bank has returned the funds to my account while they investigate the transactions.

I want to share this experience and warn anyone using a credit or debit card while traveling to be very careful and keep a good eye on your accounts.  It seems that in today's world, it is a very common occurrence for your card information to be stolen from hotels, motels and resorts.  Mine was stolen twice when I called in my card information to reserve a room for an upcoming golf event in Orlando with my old friends from south Florida.

My account was charged to pay someone's Metro PCS and Bright House accounts.  Here is the very annoying truth; after I contacted both companies by phone and emails, neither company would assist me in looking into the accounts and providing me information on the account owners even though I provided my card number, transaction dates and amounts paid.  Maybe they will be more help to the security departments at the bank, but with the problems of identity thief and bank fraud growing to out of control proportions, I doubt the mere loss of $1000.00 will create too much attention to the bank or these major corporations.


Be safe and keep a close eye on your accounts, it is the only guaranteed way you can stop major damage being done to your money and your credit.  A closed friend of mine that works in the security department of a major US bank has gone to the trouble of having a separate "travel" card issued that is not tied to any of his other banks accounts.  He funds this account when he goes on vacations, that way he is only risking the monies in that one account and it allows him to keep a good eye on the transactions.  Not a bad idea.  My friend is a major bank security manager, does that confirm to you that there is a large problem in the marketplace?

In my opinion that only way that we are going to get a grip on these issues, is for each and everyone one of us to get involved and let the companies know that they need to respond to these problems.  How about giving us a hand in tracking down these bad guys and bringing them to justice before they do more damage to more people.

Your feedback is appreciated.