A Victim of Credit Card Fraud

Back in June, I got an alert on my credit card that a large purchase was attempted online with my number. The charge was declined (fortunately) and I canceled that card. At that time, we were in physical possession of both cards on that account, at no time previously had our cards been out of our possession, our computers are completely within our own control, we use a locked mailbox and pertinent mail had not gone missing, we had used only cash on our drive down to Arizona and back for gas and incidentals (but used our credit card for hotel stays) and basically could not figure out how someone had our number. This had happened to us about 4 years prior with a smaller charge, resulting in our canceling that number, too. 

Then last week I was going through our statement and found a charge that wasn't ours. I called the merchant and requested the charge be reversed, then called the bank to cancel that card. The charge in question was for Amazon Prime, so no physical address was used. This recent fraud was committed just 2 months after changing our account number. We've been baffled as to how our account could be compromised so quickly, especially since we've used this newest card at only a handful of locations (grocery store, utility bills, our church, 3 different online or payment sites that we've used many, many times in the past). Our bank asked us to remove any credit card information stored on online merchant sites (which we'd already done except one site for my husband). 

Obviously, I want to know how someone could have obtained our numbers. An article on CNBC news site lists the following as possible ways someone's credit card info may have been stolen:

• lost or stolen cards
• skimming card info at point of payment, such as a gas station pay at the pump
• hacking your computer
• calling about fake prizes or wire transfers
• phishing, such as fake emails
• reading the card number over your shoulder at the checkout
• stealing physical mail

None of the above possibilities fits our situation. This has been unsettling to me. It's made me want to cancel our cards and stick with only cash. Our bank has been good about quickly sending out new cards with new numbers. But I'm not sure I want this hassle going forward. It's been a couple of decades since my husband and I were cash-only people. I suppose we could manage without cards. Would you ever consider ditching credit and/or debit cards and using physical currency exclusively? Have you been the victim of credit card fraud? Were you able to pinpoint how the thief got your number?

An Ant or a Grasshopper?

a new tray of radish seeds planted for green next month 

As I was starting a new set of radishes to grow under lights for greens to eat this October and November, I was thinking about the timeless fable The Ant and the Grasshopper. As you probably remember, the ant works all summer to store up food for the winter while the grasshopper enjoys the sunshine and plays. When winter inevitably comes, the ant has plenty to eat, but the grasshopper has nothing. The grasshopper comes begging for food, wanting some of what the ant worked to store away. For modern media consumers, the movie A Bug's Life is this traditional fable retold.

The fable is intended to be a cautionary tale instructing us to be hard workers (ants) and prepare for the winter that we know will soon come. Winter isn't necessarily a literal season. Winter can be a metaphor for any bad time to come or period of setback. The idle and carefree (grasshoppers) among us might just find ourselves lacking when "winter" arrives. 

I think I'm an ant. I literally prepare for the season of winter, putting up food, preparing the fireplace and stacking wood, ensuring we have some candles, working flashlights and matches, and having our furnace serviced. I don't take this as occupying some moral high ground, but I simply don't like the prospect of having to ask for assistance. I also prepare for figurative winters. We live beneath our means and invest the excess. And, we make plans for our future support when our income will be decreased. We can't see what specifically we will face, but we do know that no one is exempt from life's difficulties. We just prepare as broadly as possible.

An interesting thing about the ant -- he's not a lone wolf. He works and lives in a colony. I suppose frugal living blogs, websites, books and magazine articles help create our "ant group". Sharing information and experiences is our way to work together for better individual futures.

2 jumbo bags and 2 extra large bags filled with frozen blackberries

Here's a part of my "ant work" for this past month. Our family has foraged so many blackberries. We are now out of freezer room, so I've moved on to making blackberry jam, blackberry pancake syrup, and blackberry juice for our winter consumption. And in the meantime, while we still have lots of fresh berries to harvest, we're also eating fresh blackberries, blackberry pies and cobblers several times per week.

Just thoughts I was mulling over today.