Buyers Beware:

I just spoke to my daughter in law. She ordered something off of Amazon. She received an Ozzie Ozbourne CD in the mail that she didn't order, from Amazon. Lo and behold, when checking her bank balances, she realized they were swindled out of $5,000. Someone had gotten their credit card number and charged away. She thinks the number was somehow retrieved off her computer while placing her Amazon order.
I'm guilty of ordering stuff via the computer, but will now probably use the phone. And they did get their money back, but just thought I'd share.

If Amazon had its security breeched that badly, it would be all over the news.

thus far. What sometimes makes me nervous is when you buy something through them and then you get an email from the actual vendor confirming payment.

Diving or another form of identity theif.....was she able to recover her money?

a few months ago a co-worker receiving a bogus email claiming to be from Pay Pal...did you d-i-l receive any phising type emails?

computer-savvy, so she wouldn't have opened something or sent anything to unknown e-mails.

encrypted when they go over the internet. Don't believe the person on the other end even sees them.

one of my credit card holders and someone had tried to use the card at Timberland.com. They used the wrong expiration date and it didn't go through but they sent me a new card anyway. My son had a charge on his card from HotTopic at the mall. He doesn't go there. Tis the season not the company.

My one, and only, order from Amazon resulted in my credit card being used by another to the tune of $500ish. It was easily resolved, but a pain in the ass none-the-less.

A lot of hassle for $40-something dollars of books on alternative house building techniques.

Flavin

offline or online, on or off the phone.

I've been buying online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and dozens of other online vendors, from major to mom-and-pop operations both local and nationwide for the last 8+ years now. I've purchased everything from airline/theater/concert tickets to food, clothing to CDs, electronics to replacement parts for cell phones, Xmas gifts of all types. Never had a theft issue.

All it takes is one dishonest employee in a restaurant OR at a website shop OR on an order taking phone bank to swipe your number and sell it. The risk is the same, online or off.

The one caution I do take, and urge all others to do as well, is to only shop online at Secure sites. You'll recognize them by the little icon in the lower right of your browser showing a LOCKED lock or a UNBROKEN key. They are HTTPS sites - Secure Server sites. If you don't see an HTTPS in the URL when you go to place your order, use the phone instead.

All that said, I keep a credit card that I use solely for online ordering. If anything ever does happen, then my risk is limited to the one card and easily resolved. The problem won't be scattered over my other credit cards.

Some total idiot tried to get a credit card in my name.

Two problems:

1. I'm white, it says so on the phony license he tried to use, the guy is black.

2. My credit rating is -150. :-)

The guy was caught, he had many phony credit cards, and a lot of dope.
Suffice to say, he's in jail for a LOOOONG time now...