Please check your credit card online information often

[Anonymous]

I had my Barclaycard compromised over the weekend, and fortunately caught it the same morning it happened because I check my online card information daily or at least every other day.

I reported it to Barclay immediately over the weekend, but the fraud was several different charges for $1,271 to airbedwarehouse.com and walmart.com so it had me pretty upset. 

Worse still, this morning I woke up and saw an additional $380 in charges in pending to walmart.com, which were not mine.

Luckily when I called the Barclay fraud department, they stated the amount this morning was only an attempt and was declined because I had already canceled the card and reported the fraud over the weekend. You can imagine how upset I was at seeing yet more fraud charges this morning after we had shut down the card over the weekend! (lukcily, it was declined, but showing in pending). The other charges actually did go through, but I will not be responsible for them.

This could have been much worse had I not been checking my account daily or every other day. These people had already put through $1,271 in charges SUCCESSFULLY and were trying to do hundreds more very quickly.

Barclay says the holds should be removed within 2-3 days at most. I'm relieved that they are acting so quickly on this.

Just wanted to let everyone know to be aware and please check your online accounts as often as is reasonably possible. Please check your HOLDS or PENDING charges section as well - that was the only place these were showing up in because they had just occurred, and if I had only looked at the main Barclay page I would not have seen them.

Hope everyone has a good week and that this doesn't happen to anyone further. I also hope this information is helpful to someone.

[OmarGB9]

Thank you for the heads up. I check all my accounts daily and also monitor via the mobile banking apps. One can never be too cautious.

[Anonymous]

Having alerts on your account CAN be helpful too, but please DON"t rely on getting an alert.

Barclay alerts take a day or two to come through. I have an alert on Barclay's to let me know every time there is a transaction. I have NOT yet received the alert from the weekend yet, so if I had not been checking maually myself and reviewing my account manually, I would have no clue yet and the people would have been able to put even more transactions through.

[youdontkillmoney]

Good point; I check all my cc and bank accounts online every morning; also set up alerts, for example, 2 days ago AMEX sent me an email (they always send me one when an online charge is made when the card is not physically present since I set up alerts for this online), that a copany charged $10 and another charged $1.00; this happened before when the card was compromised; and only had this card a month, so immediately cancelled and a new amex will come today. Must be the places I use the card, something is fishy if this happens so soon after getting a new card. Anyway, I now keep a list of the vendors I use the card with such as auto charging each month so when my new card comes I can go down the list and ensure the amex is linked to these companies again.

[Anonymous]

Good advice! Thanks for the "heads up".

[Anonymous]

Yes, the alerts are not always immediate so it is good to check daily!

[OmarGB9]

Oh yea I have alerts set up as well. But I meant I also manually check everyday just like you. Not just to check for fraudulent transactions, but also to check when my legit transactions posted, make sure payments posted, etc.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I do check mine daily, but not always the pending! Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

I'm glad if this helps anyone. I also check mine daily, but also had not always checked the pending previously. I will now!

Sometimes I had been checking every other day, too - yeesh, definitely checking daily now.

[Anonymous]

The kicker is that I discovered the fraud at 8am on 7/25. Charges had already been put in pending for $1,271 on 7/25 - that means that sometime between midnight and 8am the same day, they had done the fraudulent activity.

Thinsg can happen very fast. I had just checked my account the night before and nothing new was there.

According to Barclay's, the transactions actually occurred on the 25th too- so they would had to have happened in just the 8 hour period while I was asleep. Yeesh.