Credit card details stolen

chiloutus

Hi guys,
This is a really strange chain of events so I thought I'd ask peoples thoughts here as yee would know most about it.

Recently the father go an email on his main account from some Sgt. Greene or whatever his name was. Thinking it was a phishing threat he did not open it. But as he had been in the army before I said I would open it in a college PC just to be sure.

So later that week I opened it and it was a phishing scam, but there was no attachments. So after a week in college he tells me that he got a call from his credit card info was used about 24 hrs after the email was opened to pay for a gambling site and attempted to use it on a hotel.

He did not open the email on his work laptop and it wasn't opened in any of the machines credit card details would be used on.

I am wondering if the email would be the culprit here? Or should I be looking for a keylogger on his laptop?

His paypal shows no sign of tampering BTW

900913

You could check his mail account for emails that look like there from his Bank/Credit card company. The links lead to exact replicas of the real site and usually ask you to login or update/confirm your details.

seamus

It's probably just a coincidence unless he clicked on any of the links in the emails. Most people probably receive at least one phishing mail a day, though most are caught by spam filters now. If there was a keylogger on his machine, he'd probably notice strange activity on his email, or being locked out of his email, and so forth. To be safe though, just ensure that his anti-virus definitions are up to date.

I've had to change cards twice before, details were probably stolen from some website. Haven't had a problem since then. A paper released last year estimated that more than half of websites holding sensitive personal information have no way of detecting if their data has been compromised. They have security in place, but it's only to keep people out, not detect when the security has been compromised.

Capt'n Midnight

Capt'n Midnight

If unsure get your credit card changed, takes a few days for the new one to arrive.

You have to remember to sign up with all the stuff you use it for again though. Remember some of the stuff may be annual.