153,000+ hits on google monoprice + hacked...
Identity and CC fraud are no joke, I have been a victim twice. In first case it was my wife's CC which she had used up to that time maybe twice and never online. A $500 online computer manual, (meaning no physical book to ship to a address). That means the purchaser and the shell company that sold it were in cahoots just to get the money. I contacted the book company and got a credit, and contacted Visa, changed my CC numbers. However Visa was not interested in prosecuting. America Online was the email address source, I contacted AO and they were not willing to provide a IP location of where the criminal was located. If the fraud isn't in the $$$$ thousands you will get no help from anyone. (Whoever the guy that was had access to CC numbers or bought a list, it was on the east coast we live on the west coast.)
The 2nd was again my wife, she made an online purchase with a marginal company. That company used a 3rd party CC money processing company. The 3rd party company had an employee that was a criminal. I contacted that processing company and got a credit, notified Visa, the purchase was only $20+ and again changed all our CC numbers.
WARNING! If you do business online with more than one or two vendors using your CC, you are a potential victim.
Things to do to avoid being a victim....
• If you can check your CC and debit transactions online, try to do it several times a week. Otherwise carefully review statements for purchase info. Both of the above were caught in 24-48 hours because I checked my online statements.
• Try to do business with large companies that have a good reputation, i.e,
Amazon.
• Make sure your browser is in security the PADLOCK mode when providing the purchase and credit info.
• Try to do business with Vendors that use PayPal...
Paypal is great, by using paypal you are only providing your personal info to one entity paypal. You could still be a victim but I find that companies using paypal are reliable.
• If you have to do business with a company that does not use paypal, who is their money processing company, get that name and do a check.
You can get vendor ratings from the following price comparison sites:
Pricegrabber.com, Google Shopping,
Yahoo Shopping,
Streetprices.com
• A lot of companies using 3rd party processing have an option to save your user cc info so you don't have to re-enter on a future purchase, DO NOT USE that feature. You are storing all you personal info with that vendor and trusting his employees to be honest.
• Always have your guard up, when making these purchases, look for any tip off that might send up warning flags.
• Avoid using a debit card, they can wipe out your whole checking or debit account, a CC gives some protection.
• If you are limited to debit cards because of credit issues, consider setting up a dummy debit account to use for online purchases only, you can get a debit for that account only, and simply transfer over the phone money right before a purchase. Our bank transfers over the phone are instant, some banks might not up date accounts until after midnight.
• Don't respond to any gimmick either emailed to you or popup on websites, they are designed to get your personal info.
• Consider multiple email accounts... My paypal account has an email addr. for me that no other site has. All other CC transactions has a different email address. My bank account has another email address. Rem. that you are leaving a trail whenever you make a online purchase. In some cases if you are dealing with the Gov. they even have your social security info. Email address is often now the login name, there are millions of people using the same password for all sites, thus they can easily get into that persons bank account.
• Keep your computer security software up to date, and do regular scans. You might want to consider scanning before a purchase. My system was slow for a couple of days, I did a scan and there was a trojan.
If you do alot of online stuff, consider one of the identity theft protection companies.
There are other tips for Ebay and making large purchases requiring a escrow company.
