Stolen Credit Card

May 17th, 2006
[ General ]

While at mesh yesterday afternoon, using the building’s wifi, I purchased a domain name I’ve been meaning to grab. I received a phone call later that evening from a software company wanting to validate my $249 purchase of their software. I obviously informed them I hadn’t made that purchase and I verified that they had indeed been given my credit card information to make that purchase.

I got on the phone with my credit card company and the only purchase I hadn’t made was a $1 paypal purchase. I cancelled the credit card at that point and they are reissuing me a new one.

I’m obviously not sure where the information was stolen from. I purchased the domain through my host, qwk, using flock. I’ve been in contact with qwk and they assured me their systems are secure. I have no way of verifying that for myself but I’ve been with them for years and have a lot of faith in them.

I scanned my machine for spyware and found 4 high ranked entries, all *.wmv files located in the temporary internet files. They’re in “Content.IE5” and dated about a week ago. The only other issue I’ve noticed is that I’m having to login to all my usual sites like my wordpress admin, feedburner, etc.

If anyone has any recommedations on preventing this in the future, please add to the comments.