Abracadabra

I'm reconciling my credit card statement (yes I'm a freak, I do that, and you should too), and I find this charge for $24.99 to Digital Age with a partial phone number and a stated address of Cyprus. I don't have a record of that...I check the date and try to figure out what I was doing that day. I check my email for a missed online receipt around that time. Nothing. I google 'digital age' and find 849398752 articles about life in the digital age. Sweet.

I ask my wife to call the credit card company to see if we can track down who this company is - still thinking it's just something we forgot about. They don't have a full phone number for them either.

'Cyprus' has me worried as well. (There's an interesting side-story involving Cyprus I'll tell you about another time that has me suspicious of them to begin with.)

While she's talking to the credit card company about whether or not we want to file a dispute and start a month-long process of trying to clear it up blah blah blah I go back to google and try "digital age cyprus."

Well, looky there. Apparently this is fallout from the Card Systems data theft a few months ago. The first site has a link to other similarly fraudulent charges, and well whaddya know, back in August I got hit with a $4.95 charge from Generex Technology that I wrote off as miscellaneous and assumed was just a lost receipt.

In a blog comment somewhere along the way, someone says to use the word 'fraud' rather than 'dispute' when you report this to your credit card company. I relay this to my wife who's still on the phone in the dispute process. She uses the magic word and *poof* - credit cards are cancelled, charges removed, and everyone lives happily ever after.

The moral of course, is if you're going to try to steal money from people's credit cards, stay under $5 and don't list your address as Cyprus...because I'm watching you Mr. Cyprean. I'm watching you.