Woke up to a phone call this morning from my credit card company. They wanted to verify some charges on my card that they thought were suspicious. I’ve gotten these calls before, as I’m sure we all have, but usually it’s a matter of travel, and making two card purchases from oddball places on the same day.
Not so this morning. Some ne’er-do-well racked up thousands of dollars in charges to bogus online hotel reservation sites, luggage services, and an airline. We told the card company that the charges were not ours. Our charge account has been closed.
I should have seen it coming. Several days ago, I noticed some unusual activity on my SiteMeter account. One particular IP address in Singapore accessed Bike Noob several times in the same day. Several? More like nine. Now, I’ve had readers from Singapore since the earliest days of this blog, but this one’s behavior was different. Sometimes he would access the home page, other times archived posts. He wouldn’t click to other pages within the blog, but would always start over. The stays were never more than a few seconds. Clearly, this was not the typical Bike Noob reader.
So, I’ve been frantically wasting time changing passwords to all the websites that require passwords. I’ve tried to come up with something strong, but still easy to remember. This is no fun.
How will these guys accessing our blogs help them in stealing our credit cards? Are they looking for passwords and personal information. I’m a big dummy when it comes to this stuff, now you’ve got me scared. I have a blogspot blog but I can’t think of any information on there that’s dangerous. What should I do to protect myself?
Sorry to hear about this. Keep us posted on what you learn…
I must have missed the post with your credit card information, so it’s in the archives?
What mike said. I must have missed it.
Bummer Noob. Sorry to hear.
I’ve yet to experience credit card fraud with my VISA (4860 6588 7415 1234), but I’m careful with the number.
Careful enough that you entered all the digits correctly, I hope.
This is an outrage! That hooligan should be deported from Singapore and forced to shovel my driveway.
I recommend checking out http://keepass.info/
Makes handling passwords much easier and more secure.
I looked at the above-mentioned site. Interesting. Inclusion of Michael’s comment does not represent an endorsement of the site by Bike Noob. Check it out yourself, and see what you think.