I’ve had this happen a few times even though I am very careful with my credit cards.  Usually the bank sends an alert to my email (email works better than texting for me) and even if I am overseas I check my emails and get the alert.  I usually do advise them I will be in a certain country so I don’t have cards being declined in awkward situations.

Last weekend, I got one of those unwelcome emails early Sunday morning.  We were up early at Rainbow Beach Holiday Park to see any resident birds before the first morning birding excursion.  I can get a decent cell signal so I downloaded my emails and got the bad news.  Someone had tried to charge over $400 in the UK when I haven’t been there in years!  Thankfully the bank caught it.  The strange thing is that this card had been in a sock drawer the last few months and only used 4 times in the last week – local BP station, BP station in Gympie (gotta get those Velocity points), Hungry Jack’s, Gympie and the Rainbow Beach Holiday Park to pay for the stay.  All of these are pretty innocuous low-rosk businesses in Australia.  I have no idea where the hacking took place or how it was done.  Maybe I let my guard down because I was in a location I felt safe in.  Maybe someone hacked one of those businesses or went through a rubbish bin.

I then had to try to get a good enough signal out to call Citibank in the USA.  It took a while but I finally got through and they cancelled the card and agreed to Fedex me a new one to my home in Australia.  The card arrive 5 days later so all is well.  It could have been worse – I could have been in the middle of the Amazon and not gotten the email for days instead of 3 hours from home.  But it was a good wake up call and be careful where I use my cards.