Category Archives: Deals and Steals

Such a deal!

Fraudulent Credit Card Charges at Tim Hortons in Canada

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Have you seen this, too?

On Friday morning, I was having breakfast in Lincoln City, OR when American Express called me. Or maybe I would be more accurate to say that a machine at American Express called me. It wanted to verify charges on my credit card bill for possible fraud. I got a person on the phone and soon learned that my credit card had been used to make charges at a store in Canada. I haven’t been to Canada for some time and the charges were obviously fraudulent. American Express removed the charges from my account, cancelled my credit card, and popped a new credit card in the mail for me.

The whole process took only about 10 minutes.

Tim Horton Fraudulent Charges
Here’s part of my online statement with the fraudulent charges and foreign transaction fees highlighted. Interesting how they all seem to be for different Tim Hortons locations and all processed around the same time.

Today, while updating my Quicken records for my personal finances, I tried to download American Express data. The download wouldn’t work because the account number had changed. So I logged into the American Express website to look for the new card number. That’s when I saw nine more charges for the same company, along with nine foreign transaction fees.

Apparently, whoever made a fake credit card with my information on it has connections with the Tim Hortons restaurant chain. My card was used to process nine transactions for $145 to $150 each — all on the same day: September 26, 2013. Each charge also incurred a foreign transaction fee. The total of all this was over $1300.

Of course, I called American Express and talked to their fraud people. These transactions were immediately removed from my account, so I don’t have to worry about any liability. Another 10 minutes.

I don’t know when/where my account information was stolen. My card is always in my possession — unless I’m using it for a transaction. Either one of the companies I shopped/dined at has a crooked employee who stole the information off my card or someone has a computer program that’s able to generate valid credit card number/expiration date/CID combinations and one of them happened to be mine.

But I’m curious: if you’ve found this post through a web search, have you also been hit with fraudulent charges to a Canadian Tim Hortons? If so, please take a moment to comment with the number of charges, the type of card, and the approximate total amount of the charges.

Paypal Watch Receipt Scam

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This one almost fooled me.

Will the phishing never stop? This email message, which looked remarkably legitimate to me, thanks me for sending $149.49 to a stranger for the purchase of a watch.

Paypal Watch Purchase Scam

I first received it on my iPad, which does not allow me to see where a link points to without clicking it. On my iMac, however, pointing to the link revealed that it went to a php script on a website that was definitely not PayPal.

Remember — if a suspicious email arrives, resist the urge to click a link in it. Instead, go directly to the site purportedly sending the message by typing its URL in your browser’s address bar. In this case, I simply went to www.paypal.com, logged into my account, and checked to see if a transaction had really been processed. Of course, it had not. The whole thing was a scam.

American Express Transfer Email Message Scam

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Yet another email scam — this one supposedly from American Express.

I don’t even think the bits had even finished uploading on yesterday’s scam report when this one popped into my email inbox for the same email address (which I’m probably going to turn off very shortly):

Amex Scam

Once again, it’s easy for me to recognize this as a scam:

  • Bad email address. My Amex account uses another one.
  • I don’t have an American Express Open account at all.
  • I didn’t do any Amex transfers.

The message was from a noreply address at Bebo Services. All the links point to the same page on the kingspssq.org.uk domain. Again, I haven’t tried the links and have no plans to do so.

At this point, if you’re blindly clicking links in any email message you get that looks the least bit suspicious, you probably deserve whatever results.

Be smart. Think before you click.

Verizon Acknowledgement Message Scam

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Another email scam, this one purportedly from Verizon Wireless.

Got this message in my email inbox today:

Verizon Scam Message

This is obviously a scam. Several things tipped me off:

  • I did not recently do any new transactions with Verizon Wireless. In other words, there was no real reason to contact me.
  • The message was addressed to an email address Verizon does not have for me.
  • Pointing to any of the links in the message reveals the same destination URL on the domain jsslcctv.com — which has nothing to do with Verizon.
  • I didn’t check the account number, but I’m pretty sure mine is my phone number and it doesn’t end with 8281.
  • Poor grammar/wording indicates the person who wrote this message was not a native English speaker.

I don’t know what clicking these links does and I don’t want to know. I just want to warn others that this is yet another scam that could easily suck you in if you’re not paying attention. Think before you click!

Vimeo Phishing Scam

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Wonder Woman contacts me about a non-existent video.

I have a Vimeo account. At least I think I do. I’m not sure. I don’t use the service.

Yet today, I got email messages from six people on Vimeo with basically the same content:

Hi,

Brenda Carter just sent you a message on Vimeo:

” Hi,
I found your video on vimeo.com (video-sharing site),
can we publish link to your video in our newspaper?

Thank you,
Brenda Carter, journalist
The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/)

If you want to reply:
http://vimeo.com/messages/user183325474

Brenda Carter’s profile on Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/user183325474

PhishingPretty amazing when you consider that I never uploaded a video to Vimeo.

Also amazing is how many Washington Post journalists liked my non-existent video: six so far today!

Of course, when you point to the Reply and Profile links, they don’t go to the destinations indicated. I didn’t click them. I don’t want to find out what happens. I just want to warn you that this is a scam. Spread the word.

My big challenge today is to find out if I really do have a Vimeo account and, if I do, to turn off notifications — or, better yet, close the account. I’ll also set up Mail to file future messages from Vimeo as spam.

It never ends.

Folks: don’t click links in email messages from people you don’t know.