Gone Phishin': Some Thoughts on the Security of Your Visa Credit Card
Contributed by Alix Mcmurray
Gone Phishin': Some Thoughts on the Security of Your Visa Credit Card
Remember, you VISA credit card account holder, you as a consumer of credit have certain inalienable rights. You have the right to dispute claims on your billing statement. You have the right to protect yourself against fraud. You have the right to hang up on the credit card telemarketer who calls you during dinner, when you're trying to go to bed early,or when you're about to have a long overdue romantic interlude with your partner or spouse.
And in this post-Matrix era of blurring the boundaries between earthly reality and cyber reality, you also have the right to distrust that email that you had hoped to read over your morning coffee.
How the Visa Credit Card Found Its Way into an Electronic Chain Letter
In 2003 there was an email circulated around the Internet that described an attempt at fraud by someone posing as a security agent for VISA. This email included a post-script that a subsequent fraudulent caller attempted to pass himself off as security from MasterCard. The caller reportedly told the account holder that an anti-telemarketing device had been charged to his account, and that this charge was noted by the department as being inconsistent with his previous spending pattern.
The caller then asked for the security code imprinted on the back of the credit card to which the bogus charge has been made. Of course the caller reassured the customer that this was to ensure that the card was still in the customer's possession. However, the caller then went on to have the customer repeat the entire card account number, which certainly would not be necessary were the caller actually an agent of VISA, as this would be on file.
Having been reassured that the bogus charge would be removed from his account, the victim of this scam was consequently horrified when he called back VISA with a question, only to find out that no such call was placed by a VISA employee in the first place.
