My First Identity Theft Experience

On Saturday afternoon, B and I headed into New Town, which is where all the good outdoors stores are here, to hook me up with a decent pair of hiking shoes which I desperately needed. The mission was a success, except that when I went to pay, my credit card was declined. I figured it was probably just a problem with the connection, or some other network problem between the UK and Canada, so I used my debit card instead and was on my way.

When I got home, I decided to go online to check what was up with my card. Well, it turns out that someone in BC had racked up over $1800 in charges on my card the day before. Apparently they went for Thai food, bought gas, booze, groceries, and spent over $400 at Shoppers Drug Mart.

I called Mastercard as soon as I found out, and they're sending me an affidavit to sign stating that those charges weren't made by me (since I'm quite obviously not in BC at the moment), and they'll all be reversed. So I haven't really lost anything, but what bothers me is that I have no way of knowing conclusively how it happened. I'm always very careful with my personal details, and while I do buy things online from time to time, I'm still one of those people who is really cautious about who I use my card with. I'll never enter it on a public terminal (ie, at a hostel), give it out over the phone, or use it in any situation where I feel even the slightest bit of doubt.

My only two guesses so far:
   (a) Someone's had my card number for quite some time now, and just now decided to use it; or
   (b) It came from one of the hostels we stayed at over here, which are the only times I've used it in the UK.

I also suspect that these might have been pros (or at least semi-pros), because you would actually need a physical card to buy anything at these places, so I can only guess that it was someone with a card writer who managed to make their own copy.

Anyway, it's a bit disconcerting that no matter how safe you try to be, there's always the chance something like this can still happen.

Side story: This blog was finished at an internet café near the apartment, because I locked myself out this morning while opening the front door for the upstairs neighbour who pushed our buzzer by mistake. Fortunately, he was nice enough to lend me some shoes so I could go out for the day. They're a bit on the small side, but at least I'm not in socks.