Mastercard Bits

Not that I don't normally appreciate my wife, but she really shined this week. She routinely checks our Mastercard account charges online. This week there was an innocuous charge from ACM for $9.95. We didn't recognize it, but it was small enough and we have all kinds of automatic low charges on it that we thought it may be possible that it was real. Mrs. S searched the internet for the company name. There was a believable information systems services website for the company, but it did not look like anything we would have solicited. She found some discussion threads of people who researched the company and it turns out to be a completely bogus scam from some criminal group from eastern Europe. They charge random numbers and apparently charges under $10 don't require verification. If it flies and the billed party shrugs and pays it, it's a free $9.95 for them. There's also an 800 number on the charge line of the bill that according to the web thread is bogus as well. If you call up to ask them about the charge, they "confirm" your credit card number and verify code with you, and remove the charge; but they sell the credit card info to other criminal organizations. We never called that number, and we notified Mastercard of the fraudulent charge. They cancelled the card and sent us new ones. Watch your credit card bills people. There's no shortage of scum out there.

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Cosmo gets some lovin'