(Image used under: Creative Commons 3.0 [SRC])

So last night I get a phone call saying they're my bank and asking to verify information. As you should always do under such circumstances, I refused and asked for a number where I could call her back. When she provided it, I looked it up online, but found nothing. So I called the bank at a known number and they were able to confirm it. Phase one complete.

Next I was transferred to the Credit Card Fraud department where they explained that I had unauthorized charges. My wife and I have always used our credit card as a shield for places that we didn't fully trust or online stores. Now that was coming in handy.

The sad fact is that there's nothing you can really do to protect a credit card number other than not use credit cards, but thanks to strong federal regulation instead of bogus "self-regulation", it was a very smooth process.

She read me the last 10 or so transactions and I claimed the ones that were mine and told her that the $300, $400, and $80 charges weren't. Despite that being a lot of money, by law I'm not responsible for any of it.

The charges will be reversed and new cards will be issued though not as fast as I'd like. I'd like to be angry, but at who? There's no telling how they got the number or how long they've had it. At the best, you should try to protect your card as much as possible, but don't take it personally when and if this happens to you.

FTC

(Image is in the Public Domain)

The Federal Trade Commission proposed a new standard of privacy in American Industry recently:

“Despite some good actors, self-regulation of privacy has not worked adequately and is not working adequately for American consumers,” Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the trade commission, said. “We’d like to see companies work a lot faster to make consumer choice easier.”

No kidding? Companies won't regulate themselves? Unbelievable!

Anyway, the article goes on to say:

The online advertising industry, Mr. Zaneis said, would suffer “significant economic harm” if the government controlled the do-not-track mechanism and there was “a high participation rate similar to that of do not call.” Mr. Zaneis said the industry would continue to build upon a self-regulatory framework and had recently put in place the use of icons on select online advertisements that allow users to opt out of customized advertising.

Oh boo hoo! Companies that have been tracking and tagging you like cattle would be upset if they had to stop. Waa.

Whether or not the FTC will get traction with this is uncertain, but it won't matter much if it's built into the browser AS IT SHOULD BE. Fortunately, Firefox at least is looking into this in an upcoming version.