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Been on the internet since about 1995 and developed a sense of trust and complacency towards spending money since becoming an eBay/Paypal-er in about 2003. Nothing has ever happened until . . .
By the numbers:
01. Shopped around and found a "replica watch" I liked.
02. Decided to order it and noticed they only accepted Visa and Western Union. Funny, those Chinese.
03. Website required that I register so I put down my real stuff in anticipation of placing my order and using my Visa debit card. I was not required to put down my card info at that time.
04. Returned to the page where the watch was listed and BEFORE MY EYES the price jumped from $158 to $545!
05. I noticed other watches I had looked at jumped up to similar prices!
06. I start an email dialog with customer service who told me earlier that all watches were available.
07. I questioned the price changes and was told they were sorry but none of the that brand of watches were available.
08. I emailed a link of the now $545 watch to make sure this was really not available. The response was "oh yes, this is the only one we have".
09. I told the c/s person my Visa was a debit card and he answered that was okay.
10. Then, I disappeared. (This was Thursday).
11. Rattled by this I Googled some replica watch website reviews and found this one was about as bogus as it get. (Very slick website with IM customer service.)
12. Friday evening I was ready to shut down my computer (Linux) when I got a message: You cannot shutdown while someone else is using the system. You must enter root password. TILT!
13. I had noticed Friday during the day that the old HDD had been spinning away while I was just idling around.
14. This morning I went to breakfast and my Visa was declined. I rushed home and check my balances and Paypal and nothing looked unusual.
15. Apparently Linux isn't as dead secure as I thought. There is almost NO malware or antivirus programs available for it. The folks in China really must devote a lot of time in developing worms and phishes.
16. I think this particular "merchant" has little to no stock at all and relies on you providing them with your billing address and credit card info upon order. Then you are at their mercy.
17. The website is: ok-watchreplicas.com
18. Info I found listed a lot more of the same kind of websites which are probably linked together.
19. No more China shopping for the Gritster.
Follow Ups:
Good on you at least for realizing what was going on --- NO operating system is 'bulletproof' just by its nature. I've seen folks on Mac and Linux brazenly practice "unsanitary network engagement" thinking that nothing could possibly happen to them. And then.....
Yes, Linux and Mac are historically more secure because they've had less market share and were therefore less of a juicy target. This is changing, though. Especially if you don't patch and update. (yup, even with Linux.)
There's certainly an industry of this in China...
Grits: What have you done since the attack, for your machine? Honestly, even if things appear 'clean', parts of it could be compromised... That's the big bugger: They get in, and then they install more ways to get in, which allows them to work out more ways to get in, etc etc etc... You can never really be sure you got them all...
Pretty 'effed' up
I thought debit cards could not be used over the phone. The company I work for cannot enter a debit number manually, it must be swiped.
Watcheden is the place to look for a replica.
Apparently, their .com site is down, but the .biz site is up and running.
http://www.watcheden.biz/ <--- usually, I'll use the URL boxes below, but frankly, replica watches are a bit shady anyway.
or for that matter, anywhere where the card leaves your hands (e.g. a restaurant). At least with a credit card, all that can happen is that your card is shut down, and the onus is on the credit card company to fix it. With a debit card, even an innocent (idiotic) mistake, like someone running the approval for $3,000 instead of $30, can lock up your bank account (this happened to me at a very inconvenient time).
At a local cafe I went to pay with my card and told the cashier it might not work. A guy beside me had the same bank card and said his hadn't worked all day. I think my "wing" of VISA processing may be blown due to Christmas shopping.
the debit card doesn't carry the same protections as the credit card, not to mention locking your account. Its just riskier to use in general. The best advice is to never let it leave your hand and use it as little as possible. Running it through the Walmart or grocery store readers is Ok but don't let someone take it to the cashier.
Here in the San Francisco area there was a large problem with tampered card readers at the self-checkout lanes at Lucky's supermakets. They found tampering at several stores and there were many fradulent charges, including some charities that were hit.
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