How I got scammed (05 Feb 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security
What Jamie wrote
This is a great writeup from Doctorow detailing how he got scammed and his credit card was compromised.
One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.
"That was the fraudster," she said.
Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.
Wait a sec.
He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now -- "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.
I'd given him my entire card number.
This is a good read to just raise your own awareness and be more cautious.