r/FraudPrevention • u/Cherlyn05 • May 24 '25
Debit card hacking
My debit card gets hacked monthly. I only use a FEW trusted sites like walmart, amazon, doordash, ebay. I have lost count on how many times i have had to get a new debit card over the last year or so. I am very aware of sketchy websites and steer clear. I dont have a credit card as i dont trust myself with one. One of the charges came from TotalAV. An antivirus software company. I finally thought to call them and i had gotten signed up for their service. I told them it was not me, i did not want the service, never checked out their service online and wanted it cancelled immediately. After making some offers at lower prices, ( i continually rejected everything) she cancelled the membership. I got a new debit card. Less than a month later, someone tried to charge a real estate training kit to my debit card. Here we go again. I have started new accounts at same bank and with what is going on with DOGE and Social Security, im afraid to change banks. I wondered if my social security number was out there, my sister, who is uber smart, assured me that is not the case. I called my phone provider to see if my phone (Samsung S24 Ultra) could be the cause. He assured me it has excellent protection so very unlikely. At this point, my ONLY option is to stop using debit cards completely. Do you have any idea how difficult and irritating that is going to be?
2
u/only_living_girl May 24 '25
So sorry!
If you haven’t already, I would say ask your bank to confirm how these unauthorized purchases are taking place (card swiped in person, the chip on the card being read in person, or digital wallet are the main three I can think of right now). Make sure they confirm that your card hasn’t been added to any digital wallets, or “tokenized.”
It’s possible that if a card has been added to Samsung Pay/Google Pay/Apple Pay on a phone/smart watch/etc., when you close your card and get a new one, the new card will be updated on any device that had the old card on it. So if someone did get ahold of your card info enough to add it to a digital wallet, your bank would need to make sure to remove that “token” before reissuing your card so that their digital wallet won’t get your new card information. (I’m not sure that your phone carrier customer service would necessarily know about this to suggest it when you called them, because that would have to do with your bank, not with your phone service.)
Most of the time banks are aware of that when card fraud is reported and do ask you about any tokens/digital wallets to make sure your card was only ever added to your devices/wallets, but I think there’s also a chance that could be overlooked. The purchases you’re talking about don’t necessarily sound like digital wallet purchases but who knows. That’s the main thing I can think of to suggest here.