Have you checked your credit card lately?

I made a couple of online purchases at the end of May. I read on a message board Friday that several people who had ordered online from one of the places that I'd ordered, had been having fraud problems with their credit or debit cards that they'd used for their purchase.

So I checked mine. And yes, it had been fraudulently used. Not only that, but either none of the security procedures (that should have raised a fraud alert) were used, OR my identity has been stolen, too. The thief somehow added himself/herself to my account. That shouldn't have been able to happen, because I'm the primary card holder. I'm supposed to be the only one who should have been able to do it. And the thief changed the email address, home address, and telephone number on file. The thief shouldn't have been able to do that either, unless he/she had enough info to convince the credit card company that they were me. In which case, my identity has probably been stolen, too.

Hopefully I caught this early enough to minimize the damage, but my husband had his identity stolen in 2001, and that was a nightmare.

For the record, there is no guarantee that it was the online shopping. It could have been a gas pump I used locally. So now my husband and I will be paying cash for gas, and no more online shopping, either.

It also could have been unrelated to either the online purchase or the gas pump. My husband and I can't help but wonder if it was an inside job at the credit card company since the security precautions appear to have been ignored or overrided.

Whatever the case, the investigation has begun, and a fraud alert has been filed with the credit bureaus. So now we wait and see, and deal with any problems that may arise, one at a time.

As a side note, the guy who stole my husband's identity in 2001 DID get caught and prosecuted. Hopefully this person will be, too.

So, have you checked your credit card lately for anything questionable? If not, do yourself a favor and don't wait till your statement shows up. It might not ever come. Most cases of identity theft aren't discovered for awhile, like a month or two or three. By that time, the thief has done a LOT of damage!

Oh, HAIL!!!

May 14th we got a hailstorm that was the worst I've ever experienced in my 30 years of living in Virginia. The odd thing is that it seems to have hit our little neighborhood the worst. We got hailstones as big as 1.25 inches while a neighborhood east of us got hail about .75 inches, and another neighborhood a little farther to the southwest of us got only rain!

Needless to say, it did some damage. It dinged our siding really bad, and broke one of our security lights. I'm grateful that no windows were broken. I picked up some of the hail from our porch and yard and put it next to a ruler on my stove, so you can see in the above photo how big it was.