Identity Theft Victim Gets Last Laugh

Ovid writes "Being a bit of a hypocrite, I sometimes whine about privacy in my blog. I do, however, try to be careful about not letting anyone get information about me they shouldn't and I rarely, if ever, use a credit card online. This is why I was surprised to find out one morning that identity thieves had racked up thousands of dollars one two of my credit cards. By early afternoon, I caught them and the police arrested them."

Comments

Re:I was waiting for the twist in the story...

[anthony_dipierro]

I think you have "thief" confused with thief. They really stole his money.

How do you know this?

And why wouldn't the people at Denny's help him? He has his credit card and ID to prove that he is who he says he is.

Did they even check his ID? They certainly didn't check the last guy's ID that claimed to be him.

If someone stole your car, would you say, "So what? They're only stealing from the insurance company."?

No. I don't have insurance.

A defrauded man, his credit card companies, restaurant & hotel employees, and the police come together to arrest two thieves and somehow this is a bad thing?

Assuming it's true, it's not a bad thing. The end result, anyway. I think the means are a bit suspect.

This is the way things should work, people taking responsibility and looking after their own interests and those of others.

Bah, I can see looking out for the interests of others. But not for the interests of Discover Card or whatever other megacorp. Especially Discover Card, though. Discover Card is evil.

This story is very likely made up..

[EmagGeek]

First of all, anti-terrorism legislation requires hotels retain a photocopy of your driver's license. I find it highly unlikely that the hotel will accept a license in one name and payment via another name with only a credit card number. Second, credit card companies don't get details about a charge for 2-3 days after the charge is made, so there's no way that the CC company could have known that the charge was made at Denny's or what zip code that Denny's was in. The credit card processors always take 2-3 days to post the charge to the issuing bank, and it is then and only then that the issuing bank knows what store the charge was made at. The only piece of information the issuing bank receives is the TYPE of establishment the charge is made at. In this case, the only think his credit card issuer would have been able to tell him was that the charge was made at a restaurant. That's it.

I went through similar credit card theft 2 years ago, so I have firsthand knowledge of how these processes work. I check my online accounts every day, so one day when I saw that my available balance had been cut in half, I called to see what the authorization was for. My CC company told me that all they knew was that it was an Office Supply retail store in British Columbia. They were very helpful in explaining how Visa and Mastercard work - that the merchant processor submits an authorization, which tells the issuing bank the type of store and amount, and then posts the actual transaction in a batch process every 48-72 hours. It is only when the transaction is posted that the issuer knows any details about the place where the card was used.

This guy certainly has his talent for fiction, but that is all this story is.

Re:This story is very likely made up..

[DNS-and-BIND]

I think Dan Rather is a *bit* more famous than you, and yet he perpetrated a much larger lie. Well-respected community leaders have lied about much smaller things. Some people have a need to be percieved as war heroes, and lie about their military service. All these people are much larger than some programmer in a small community that really doesn't meet that often anyway.

I hope that now you realize just how silly your "I stand by my story" defense sounds.

Re:Canada

[mp3phish]

You can?

I know several people in the workplace who must make appointments several months in advance just to see their doctor. Sure, the ER is reasonably fast (provided ou aren't in a large city) but then you have to pay tons of out of pocket expenses. And what if it isn't an emergency but it can't wait 2 months? Then your SOL.

I'm sure the same stories happen all over the world. But you can't justify your beliefs by saying that in the US it is more streamlined. It isn't.