Five Days before Christmas I was Robbed Blind ...

Well, the Dalton brothers that were still stumbling a bit some months ago when they tried to trick me with the support scam (Read All About It!) did indeed get skilled up quickly!

After our family's traditional Pre-Christmas Pizza (wooden oven, certified Neapolitan pizzas and everything!) I, with all the flourish and 'je ne sais pas quoi' world weary experience of an International Dad of Mystery, alerted the waiter by catching his eye and miming the signing of a bill. After having been chastised royally by my daughters ('No one does that! Who do you think you are, you're so embarrassing!') Fortunately I was saved by the arrival of the ever hungry card machine.

– Sorry sir, your payment was denied.

– What! Eh, I think I've paid my bills. Ha, ha!

Waiter looked at me with a bored expression while my daughters studied the floor. The he let me try again. After the fourth try we gave up. My wife paid the bill.

On our way home I, in the passenger seat now as I was too worked up to drive, dived into the apps my bank had provided me with. My heart rate went through the ceiling of the family car when I saw why my card hadn't worked. My bank / card issuer had suspended it because of suspicious activities. And those suspicious activities were payments that weren't mine! Certain that it had been the dubious looking young couple beside our table. who somehow copied my card with some wireless nefarious device and instantaneously purchased stuff, I tried to call the restaurant. Lucky for me, evidently, according to my family, they had already closed.

– Why do you suspect them Dad, what was so suspicious about them if I may ask? And how has this anything to do with the restaurant?

– I tell you. The man didn't eat, no man goes to a restaurant and doesn't eat!

– Is that all, because he only had a glass of wine?

– No, look at the time, it says 20.12. That was when I paid and we left the restaurant, it must have been them!

– We left half an hour earlier Dad.

– Oh, now I see. It's the date. Well ...

By popular demand I was asked not to come with any more theories or suspicions that night and instead call my bank the next morning. During the evening I found another app from my bank on my phone. That one told me that all three increasingly bigger purchases had been made on the very same platform where I almost weekly buy something. But the purchases totaled into a sum that I’d need at least a year to rack up. And how clever! They were immaterial purchases, no delivery address needed.

After a bad night's sleep I was immediately in contact with my bank. Yes, they had noticed from the purchases that something wasn't right and the card had by now been killed and buried. A new one would arrive, at some point. I was instructed to write, print and send by post (!) my complaint to them but, before that do my best to settle the matter with the seller. 

The global platform's extremely professional service representative confirmed that the purchases indeed looked wrong but that they wouldn't credit them and because of the data protection legislation they couldn't tell me anything else.

– So you confirm that the purchases are criminal but you will not credit them to me. Instead you want me to complain to my bank who will then contact you?

– Yes. And please note that you should at the soonest update your new credit card details to us to be able to continue to use our services. Was there anything else sir? No, well have a nice day then!

Well I haven't got my new card yet. And I did post a neatly typed complaint form to my bank. But as the postal service nowadays have service level objectives exactly like, as my mother told me, in the 1940's of her childhood it will take some time until I a) know if I have to bear the whole loss of money by myself and b) have new shiny credit card.

Good thing really that this Christmas didn't include too much of meet ups with relatives or travel. I wouldn't have had the time anyway. I tell you what I've been doing. I've been beefing up my defenses against all the malevolent forces that are ganging up on, me! They didn't succeed with the IT support scam so they decided to attack my little poor credit card, a poor little thing with quite a puny credit limit even. How dare they? I'd show them!

Somehow someone had got hold of my credit card information to the level of detail that they could do purchases on my behalf at a very slick and reputable global platform but, crucially, one that doesn't require two-factor authentication. Maybe they do have it but at some point I'd probably been led down a happy rosy La-La path and opted out of it in favor of the convenience of One-Click purchases. How great, one click!

Certainly someone could have copied my information in the physical world, which I couldn't do anything about except being even more careful in the future. But, in regards to the other dimension where I walk. I'd be taking off my glasses and squinting as menacingly as I could muster and utter:

– Do you feel lucky, Cyberpunk!

I started making an inventory, I had user accounts at over three hundred sites (300)! And, when I started going through them I must admit that all passwords weren't super long and cumbersome. And that many of the sites I didn't even remember and that some, actually, looked a bit dubious.

I killed user accounts at sites I'd never use. I changed my passwords everywhere to something totally insane with all possible letters, numbers, symbols and weird characters. One password is definitely never used more than at one site and I have activated two-factor authentication wherever it's offered. I use one of them password applications that generates and remember user-id's and passwords for me and helps me stay vigilant by alerting me of sites which get compromised. I've done a solemn promise to myself to stop or minimize purchasing at sites where the payment transaction isn't secured by solid authentication, preferably obviously by my own bank.

I'm done now. It's been an exercise as tedious and labor intensive as organizing your socks drawer. Not done, done obviously. I have to make it a weekly routine to check that I haven't succumbed to sloth in these matters but I'm definitely in a better state than before. The exercise has seen me tapping my keyboard until the wee hours of the mornings of the holidays, seething with rage. At the Dalton brothers who pulled a fast one but mainly I've been cross at myself. I had to work quite a lot to gain the net amount of what they stole from me. I don't know if was made possible because of what I did or didn't do but the possibility of that irritates me insanely.

When I get my credit card next year I'll be more careful, better prepared and on my toes when making transactions on the net. So as to minimize the possibilities that I'll be paying for other peoples' goods and services. 

That's my New Year's Resolution!

Maybe it could be yours as well?

Happy New Year Everyone!