by Ryan McKeen
Early Sunday morning I received a call from “Bank of The Universe”. It seems in a galaxy far, far, away they detected some unusual activity on my card.
The pleasant talking machine on the other end of the line asked if I had made a charge in the amount of some money to a reputable charity at 3:00 a.m. I followed the bot’s instruction and pressed “1” to confirm that I made no such charge.
Then I was connected to a life form. An actual living and breathing employee of “Bank of the Universe”.
After some discussion, I asked if it was unusual for someone in possession of a stolen credit card to attempt to make a fraudulent charitable donation. She said, “no, it’s very common.”
No, I wasn’t the victim of some charitable thieves.
According to this CNET article, thieves commonly donate to charities to determine if a card is active. The idea is that a small random charitable donation is less likely to be noticed by Credit Card companies than say a penny transaction to www.imanogoodcreditcardtheifdvd.ee.
So remember to carefully check your credit card statements for some unauthorized charity.