1y ago

How do I prevent hackers from stealing my debit card information?

My wife and I keep getting our debit cards stolen online. We notice the charges and are able to dispute them and cancel our cards, but it sure is annoying.

We don't put our card information on suspicious websites. They're on well known websites like amazon and Facebook.

We ran out emails through a data breach checker and it found nothing.

I don't think there's any malware on our devices.

Any idea what could be happening and how to prevent it?

71 comments

Something tells me you’re keylogged if you keep cancelling, ordering new ones and getting pwned within days of the new card arriving. Format your computers. Use more open source tools whose code you can audit. Firefox instead of Chrome, no sketchy extensions like Honey and cash back stuff. If you pirate stuff, try to do it from verified sources.
- whose code you can audit
  More like whose code is audited by someone or someones you choose to trust. Let's be honest here, average Joe isn't auditing shit.
  
  You mean you don't read the billions of lines of code contained in all of the open source apps that you use? Shame, shame... :)
- It happens within months, not days. I don't use honey and I don't pirate. I use both chrome and Firefox, but maybe I should stick to Firefox.
  
  Don't save your cards in browsers anywhere.
  
  Is there a particular (probably online) shop or service you go back to?
  Two times it happened to me one was a local gas station running a skimmer the other was an online hotel comparison site that turned out to be dodgy.
  First was in local paper and caught a few of us out...the second my bank actually contacted me about saying it was dodgy

For one thing, stop using debit cards on the internet. Credit cards do not take the money out of your account first, thus offering you an additional layer of protection, and many like Discover in the USA are known for offering $0 liability for unauthorized purchases. They can be more of a hassle to use like they may call your mobile number to check on a suspicious purchase, but at this point it seems you want that level of paranoia. Don't miss a rent (or any important) payment bc you have nothing left in your debit account to work with! (Even if it is added back quickly, will it be handled quickly enough?)
- Supporting your point of using a credit card over debit. In the US there’s limited liability for a stolen physical card (up to $50) which most of the big card issuers waive to zero. If your physical card is still in your possession (fraud due to breach, skimmers, etc) there’s zero liability, by law.
  Any no-fee credit card is better than using debit as long as you use it “in lieu of cash” and pay off the bill every month. My debit cards live in my safe rather than my wallet. They sit there only for the rare occasion I absolutely need to take out cash for something, which is very rare these days.

As others have mentioned use a credit card instead of debit.
But if you need/want to use a debit card, then take a look at services like Revolut or Wise (non-referal links included).
Both provide you with debit cards that you can enable/disable instantly within their app. Revolut gives you "virtual cards" which can be used for online subscription, so you can create a dedicated virtual card for each subscription (minimizing the impact if/when one of your cards is leaked). Revolut also has "one time use cards", so a new debit card number for a single purchase. In practice, more and more vendors are disallowing "one time use cards", but you can create a similar effect with the virtual cards.
Both platforms also allow you to set up dedicated (monthly) spending limits on either the physical or virtual cards. So you can limit your exposure that way too.
- On top of just being a good idea in general, this could help OP figure out how their cards are getting stolen. Use a unique card number for each different service, and you can tell which service is compromised, either in your use of it, or in the service itself.

A shop you both go to has a machine with a fake overlay swiping your info. You can find online how to spot those. I doubt it's happening online.

As noted elsewhere, do everything you can to avoid handing your card to anyone.
Use tap to pay wherever possible, then chip - neither of those methods give the card number to the merchant. Do not swipe unless you absolutely have to, and then inspect what you are swiping to make sure nothing is attached to the card reader.
For online purchases, do everything you can to avoid giving your card number to anyone - use ApplePay / GooglePay / Amazon Pay / PayPal etc. wherever possible. These can be used to put charges on your card without giving your card # to the merchant. These are one-time authorizations (unless you explicitly identify it as a subscription / recurring charge), so they can't reuse the transaction token they get.
- Privacy.com is really good for online payments that don't accept apple/Google pay. It creates a virtual credit card that's locked to that particular vendor so even if the vendor has a data beach hackers can't use the card.
  
  but it just works in US right? is there any alternative for privacy.com that works everywhere?

Credit and debit cards are not as secure as banks pretend them to be. Chips can be cloned with a cheap device sold in the black market (this is known as "skimming"). PINs can be easily stolen simply by eavesdropping.
My personal opinion: A business you frequent has been constantly skimming credit and debit cards. If you give your card to any salesperson and lose sight of it, the probability of it getting skimmed is pretty high.
NEVER give out your card. Ask for the salespeople to give you the terminal and scan it yourself.
Other than that, change your passwords, and NEVER reuse them.
EDIT: As others have said, NEVER EVER use your debit cards on the internet. Ask if your credit card company provides virtual credit cards (which require you to use a phone app to authorize every transaction). If not, choose another company.

A lot of other good comments here but I would also recommend not swiping your card at ANY machine. I had my debit card # lifted several times before I finally decided to only use something secure like ApplePay (at the gas pump particularly). Apple Pay changes the card number every single time it’s used. So, it can at least pinpoint the exact moment it was stolen if it somehow did give up your info. I’ve never had to worry about my card number getting stolen since I made that change.
- I don't have apple pay, but I do use Google pay whenever I can.
  
  Google Pay will do the same thing so you should be good there. It's called credit card tokenization.
  
  Looks like Google will offer that too if you use Google Wallet on your phone.

Have you used these cards in public? Your information could have been picked up by card skimmer.
At least where I live, it's very common to hand payment cards over to wait staff at restaurants. I had my card information compromised during a visit to Boston several years ago.
- Our last card was stolen by someone in great Britain. We're in the USA. I don't think they're being stolen by someone locally unless our information is being sold on the dark web.
  
  The card thief won't use it, they will sell them to someone else. Which will certainly sell it to another person.
  
  Credit card numbers go for something as low as a few bucks a number. I think last time I was rolling around the dark net markets they were $4.
  It's quick and easy to steal. They collect a bunch and sell them and the other people take the risk of using them.

What’s your wifi situation like? Is your network secure? Are you often using a shared or public network? Perhaps it’s time to change your wifi password or look into a vpn if you are often using public networks. This is all on top of the usual changing your passwords, setting up two factor authentication (not via sms, use an Authenticator app) etc. you could also consider a service like Privacy (card number generators with limits or one time use)
- We have a private wifi network in our house. It's password protected.
  
  What protocol?
  
  Wep or wpa ?

You said you use your credit card on Facebook and you're not sure why it's getting stolen .....🙄🤔

Look for common patterns, are there places you both regularly use your cards? Look at those places. Sometimes even your bank can be compromised.

If you are financially able, use a credit card instead of a debit card. I do realize that only makes sense if you are able to pay it off every month, and when we were younger that was impossible. But maybe get one to only use online?

Interesting.
Does it concern the cards from the same bank? I've read about some banks actually abusing their own clients and meddling with their money...
- Yeah they're all from the same bank.
  
  Not likely but could be that the bank is compromised. Not that it makes much difference, but is it a major bank? Do you have cards from other banks that don't get stolen regularly? Do you use a specific local atm regularly? Always tug on the card scanners at ATMs and gas pumps to ensure a skimmer isn't being used. If there is a skimmer you will likely be able to pull it off or it will wiggle in a strange way, letting you know it's not "stock"
  
  Could you try and set up a test account in different bank and check whether the problems spread onto the new card too?
- I’ve read about some banks actually abusing their own clients and meddling with their money…
  Might also be an employee there making a few bucks on the side…
  
  Might be, but then it's criminal case, pretty much...

Get some new cards to start with.

Make an account in a bank/service that lets you generate and use single-use cards. Revolut comes to mind (I have a referral code too, wink wink), people also use a service I forgot the name of. Privacy-something. They used to sponsor a lot lf YTubers, but now I use SponsorBlock so I don't remember.

It depends where you live, but have you considered using transfers instead of card?

I use Privacy for everything. I can easily cancel and dispute cards and not have to go through the new card song and dance.

71 comments