It’s already happened to me twice.
A couple of years ago, on July 4th weekend, we were doing some grocery shopping for a family barbeque. To pay for the items, I used a debit card and it was turned down. I was mortified and mystified at the same time, since I knew the account had funds. I ended up paying with cash. When I called the bank, the security department informed me that several charges had appeared against the account all at once from all over town so they had frozen the account. I checked online and I found about 30 miscellaneous charges, ranging from $30-$70 from different stores. The account indeed, had been hacked. That weekend, we had no funds available, as we only had that one bank account, and the credit card was with the same bank and they shut that off too. We only had around $40 cash and that had to last til the weekend was over. I believe the account was compromised by a PayPal transaction after an Ebay purchase we had made. We ended up closing it and opening up a new one when the branch was open.
We had learned from our mistakes and established multiple (free) checking accounts for various purposes: online bill pay, online purchases, and a separate one for fixed expenses such as rent. The account that is used for online purchases does not have a lot of funds. Our other accounts are NEVER used for debit card business. I know credit cards are better for online shopping or travel but we avoid credit cards since are trying to pay off debt.
Fast forward to the present… This past Fourth of July weekend (again!) I was checking over the bank accounts online and found a suspicious transaction. A payment was made to an online dating service, UK branch, against my debit card, along with international transaction fees. Now I know I did not make that charge, and never have had any dealings with any online dating service, now or in the past, much less the UK branch. I believe that some hacker is testing to see if they can make transactions against our account unnoticed, so they can make further withdrawals. I called the bank’s security department and they immediately shut down that debit card. I am now checking daily to make sure no further transactions occur. So far so good. I am not too worried this time, as very little cash is in that account, and the bank indicated they will restore any funds missing. I may never know for sure how they got into the account, it could have been from an online transaction.
The bottom line is, anyone can be victimized by these identity thieves, and they can come from anywhere, even internationally.
Take steps to protect yourself:
- Use only one designated debit or credit card for online transactions so you can easily track your purchases. If using a debit card, do not keep a lot of cash in that account to minimize damages.
- Make sure the site you are buying from is secure.
- Monitor your accounts every couple of days, or at the very least once a week to catch any suspicious transactions.
- Contact your bank immediately if you spot any discrepancies.
- Shred all documents, pay stubs, letters, statements that have your name or account numbers.
- Be very selective about giving your social security number, birth date, phone number. Unless the requestor gives a valid reason, just say, “No I don’t share that information.”
- Keep enough cash in the house to cover a few days worth of expenses such as food and gas
- Order a free copy of your credit report annually to make sure no new accounts have been opened in your name
The Apartment Prepper's Blog 
This is really good advice! I never thought of having multiple accounts but that’s a terrific idea.
It’s best not to use a debit card for online purchases. At least with a credit card, you can dispute the charges before you have to pay anything.
People should always use a separate bank account and email address just for Paypal. Using one email address for everything you do online is not good security.
If your Paypal account is hacked, you really need to figure out exactly how it happened so it doesn’t happen again. This might help you figure it out:
http://misterreiner.wordpress.com/2010/06/27/how-your-hotmail-gmail-or-yahoo-email-account-may-have-been-hacked/
Cheers
My debit card gets shut down about once a year. In my case, thankfully, it’s always from me flubbing my pin # a couple of times and is always followed my a phone call from my credit union and they reactivate my card.
I just have one bank account and it’s with a credit union. Seeing all the shifty stuff commercial banks have done over the last decade or so and seeing how quickly some of those banks disappeared off the face of the planet has convinced me that I’ll be sticking with credit unions from now on. There’s a big difference in how credit unions and banks operate and credit unions are member owned.
I stopped buying things online about a year and a half ago. In my case it was from having my income cut in half for a bit, but I noticed the only thing I missed from online shopping were pants from LL Bean, so I make the occasional purchase from them and that’s it.
When my income got hit I stopped using my debit card. I thought it would be easier for me to be thrifty and track my spending if I had to hand over cash or write checks. In the end I decided that the Visa people had enough money and no need or right to know how I spent my cash and almost entirely stopped using my debit card. I use it for big purchases and gas, (and my pants) but that’s about it.
My “year of living frugally” has also convinced me that I don’t need a credit card. I’ve paid mine off and canceled them. I have a line of credit attached to my checking account and if some big emergency expense comes up I can transfer money from my line of credit into my checking account. I get a much better rate from my credit union on my line of credit than I ever did from a credit card company and best of all there’s no credit card company to deal with!
Sworn off using credit cards as well but they are not quite paid off yet. Congratulations on having paid all credit cards!
So, if you have not already done so, you should periodically scan your system for spyware. You could have inadvertently have opened an email with a joke or an image from a friend that contained a spyware script. It is easy to do, and I have done this several times. It is no ones fault either, people innocently send forwards that contain harmful scripts all the time.
There are several free versions of spyware scanners out there. I use two of them in conjunction with each other:
– Adaware Free – http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php
– Spybot Search & Destroy – http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html
Also, I personally have contained 90% of my purchasing through Amazon.com. I trust it as an online merchant to keep my data secure.
Just my 2 cents…