My First Piece Of Internet Fraud

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I had my first ever piece of internet fraud this weekend.  No it wasn’t me committing it.

On Saturday I was checking my e-mail and this e-mail came in from Amazon Payments thanking me for my payment and subscription to ‘Private Internet Security Ltd’ (or similar) for $39.99.

At first I thought it was a spam e-mail but it looked too professional and valid websites came up when hovering over the links.  So I clicked through to Amazon Payments, that I have never used, to find that I had an account, and it had my card details in it.

I complained to Amazon, and the individual retailer.  Amazon Payments confirmed that the account had been set up fraudulently.

I cancelled my card with NatWest, who I have to say were exceptionally helpful – the charge was refunded the day after, and I received my new card the day after that.  Exceptional customer service.

Now I receive an e-mail from LastPass, whom I use to save usernames (not passwords), addresses, etc so all my forms fill in with a click of a button, to advise me that they have disabled my account as they have found my details for sale publicly – with my master password.

I do take my internet security fairly seriously and have different and fairly difficult passwords for the likes of Facebook, Hotmail, banking and Paypal, but for all other minor websites such as shopping sites and internet forums I have the same master password.

I am assuming that my details were stolen from the Ebay hack a while back – my Ebay and Amazon accounts had the same master password, and my Amazon account I stored my card details in which I don’t do on other websites.

Anyway I thought I was pretty good with internet security but clearly I am not good enough.

Time to up my game and make it harder.  I am lucky that it was just one small transaction and the bank refunded it without quibble.  This shit is serious.

By the way, did you know that internet fraud is not included in official crime statistics?

The photo is of Charles Ponzi.

Tagged:Fraud