I have had it happen a couple of times over the years. The first I got notified by CITI that a transaction for $1.79 was being attempted at a vending machine in Manhattan NY. Was it me? Ummmm NO! While on the phone with the CSR rep reporting the fraud and getting the card shut down they tried to purchase over $400 worth of stuff at Ross in Manhattan. They did the same thing the small charge to see if the card they cloned is active and if noticed then hit with the real fraud before they can be stopped. Fortunately I caught it immediately and they got nothing from my card. I traced the "clone" of the card to using it at a gas station where I live owned by some not so honest guys from the Middle East. Within 6 months the station was busted for cloning and selling a LOT of people's credit information.
The 2nd one was worse. Notified one Saturday evening was I trying to buy a $1200 mattress online with my Discover card. Nope. The good news is even the website was suspicious of the transaction and had paused the order without verifying credit information with the "customer" who placed the order. Again on the other side of the country from me. Discover shut the card down and replaced it but it didn't stop there. Over the next month I got 3 calls from dealerships in Virginia telling me I needed to unfreeze my credit reports (done after the Discover incident) so they could do the financing on the car(s). I told all 3 they needed to call the cops because it wasn't me they were thieves. Of course cops weren't called or didn't show and they walked away. Then the big one hit: the letter from the IRS stating I wasn't getting my refund that year until I came to their offices locally with a 2 inch stack of paperwork proving my identity because they also filed tax returns in my name and social! Now have a special code the IRS sends me for when I file so they know it is ME filing. I filed police reports, FTC, and any other legal document you can think of but the cops in Hanover VA said it was my problem and the cops where I live said it was theirs. I don't think even the IRS went after them.
Now I have very complicated passwords that I change 2-3 times per year. I check all accounts diligently and my cards are in a protected wallet that prevents scanning the digital information from the chip. I don't insert to pay ANYWHERE. Not even the grocery store and use virtual card numbers when paying on line. I figure eventually these criminals will find a way around all of that too.
@AndySoCal wrote:[...]
The other thing that is not helping potentially is all the data breaches my name has been involved with.
[...]
The data breach thing is out of control. I swear I get a new letter from some major financial institution roughly every 3-4 months. Luckily most of them seem to come with a free year of some sort of credit monitoring or ID protection... so far I've been ok. I check all my accounts on a VERY regular basis, however, since I find it soothing and part of my morning routine on my phone apps!
Sock - 
On my 
Debit Cards - 
@bs1234 wrote:
@unsungivy wrote:
@AndySoCal wrote:[...]
The other thing that is not helping potentially is all the data breaches my name has been involved with.
[...]
The data breach thing is out of control. I swear I get a new letter from some major financial institution roughly every 3-4 months. Luckily most of them seem to come with a free year of some sort of credit monitoring or ID protection... so far I've been ok. I check all my accounts on a VERY regular basis, however, since I find it soothing and part of my morning routine on my phone apps!
Of course we, I mean people I know, I mean people i don't know: steal your credit card info, take over your DNS and spoof your bank apps. But as long as you think everything's OK, we, I mean they, continue to enjoy your credit.
So possibly the next level up to check your accounts is to go into a branch each day (closely checking it really is THE branch and not a spoof store front), and hope that their systems aren't too badly hacked
Truth.