I am posting this merely as an advisory, so please don’t take it as a strict word of warning. Over the past few weeks, several folks who have made purchases through the Transformers Collectors’ Club have had some security issues with their credit cards following the purchases. In some cases, these purchases were recent, in other cases they went back a little while.
To this point, these issues had not impacted the G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club side of the house, until recently. We have heard from a smattering of individuals that they have noticed mysterious charges on their credit cards, from many of the same shady vendors as folks are seeing on the Transformers side of the house.
At this point it is unknown what the source of these issues are. I do not post this to incite panic, but just to remind everyone to keep a careful watch on your credit card statements at all times and be very vigilant with any purchases that are made online. I think folks in the G.I. Joe community should be aware of these issues and just pay some extra attention to your statements.
At least one GeneralsJoes reader has written in with almost $600 in unauthorized charges. While the credit card companies are generally able to assist with these issues, it’s up to you to be diligent in checking your statements and reporting issues to the proper individuals.
To read the Transformers Collectors’ Club statement on the matter, click here.
Guess I wont be buying anything from the club for awhile until things are secure
It’s unlikely this is their fault. Most companies use 3rd party vendors for cc transactions and never receive enough information to hack. More likely, the victims have had viruses downloaded to their machines that are capturing info.
I recently had $800 in charges to my card. I’ve never given the card to TCC orbGIJCC. It may well be that the incidence is up overall, but because we are a self selecting community it appears correlated to our interests.
There’s far too many incidences being reported on the Transformers boards to blame it on a virus on the buyer’s computer. I renewed my Joe Club membership online last month and discovered almost $600 in charges on my card yesterday. If I hadn’t been curious about the Transformers Club’s membership incentive figure last week and saw the notice on their homepage, I’d be sitting around wondering how somebody got my credit card info.
If the Club is sticking by their system being secure then I’m thinking there’s probably a crooked employee at their credit card processor selling people’s card numbers. A few years ago, I bought something online with a check and a couple of weeks later got a letter in the mail from the check processing company informing me that my personal information had been breached. A little Googling and I found out they had an employee writing people’s personal information down by hand and selling it.
And I wouldn’t describe the vendors as shady. The transactions are shady but the vendors I got were a couple of “test” $1 charges from Yahoo Wallet followed by bigger charges from Best Buy, Dell, and Walmart.com.
You are correct that it could be someone at the processor. It could be also be that the processor was hacked. The point I was making is that Fun Publication is likely a victim here and the commonality isn’t them but the processor.
Oh, and in my case they actually created a fake card (easy to do, you’d be surprised) and the $800 up at a strip club in Vegas. My bank caught on when they started mass buying porn memberships. The credit card company is covering me so I can find the humor in it.
the level of complaints coming in are staggering. has there been any updates from fun publications regarding this issue? it seems to me that this issue isnt making big enough news.