Last week I bought something on ebay. Much to my surprise I got a warning from Payal (on the web, secure), saying they could not process my payment because the credit-card company had refused the transaction, and that I had to contact my credit-card issuer for more information. So I called ING Card (supplier of my Mastercard compatible credit-card). Turned out they had blocked the use of my card, because of a suspicious transaction of 23000 Euro. Whoops! Luckily ING is insured against such fraudulent use, so I have nothing to worry about. Except of course the fact that it could happen in the first place. Since I’m extremely careful (almost paranoid) with my cc-data, I was quite amazed that even I had fallen victim to theft, so I decided to do some research on my own. The first transaction I know was not mine is:

24-11-2008 TELE2 MOBILE SEVRES FR 20,00

This couldn’t possibly be my own doing;
I was not in France on that date, did not leave my cc-data behind when I was there last time, nor did I use it online on or around that date, plus I already have other “MOBILE” providers so wouldn’t need “TELE2”. Using this to do more searching I know that my only suspicious use had been for two small transactions in France, to pay for the use of a certain autoroute (tol-motorway, tol-weg, Péage). Already had a weird feeling about those machines, because they did not look very secure to me. But anyway; I *did* use them when I was there (with Sanne), as can be seen on my credit-card statement from that time;

15-10-2008 AUTOROUTE DU SUD NIMES OUEST FR 0,70
22-10-2008 AUTOROUTE DU SUD NIMES GARONS FR 0,70

I’m fairly certain one of these two was the source-location of the fraude. So, all I can say is: If you’re from the Nîmes area, or travelling there, be careful with the use of your credit-card for those machines from payages. I found absolutely nothing about this online, but if you’ve recently been a victim of cc-fraude as well, I’d like to know if by any chance all of the above means something to you..