47-55.1 Soooooo, I was hacked, scary stuff!!!

[dsraven]

sorry to hear you got scammed. they are pro's at it. too bad they couldn't put that much effort into an actual honest days work.
here is another thing to watch out for, it happened to me at an international airport in texas on a layover, just long enough to stop for a lunch between flights.
I had my wallet in my hip pocket, zippered enclosure on the pocket which was not easy to open. seemed safe enough. stopped at an airport "sit down" style restaurant, found a table and a couple of chairs for the wife and myself. the restaurant was set up so there wasn't much room between the chairs which made it hard for others to get past. another "traveller" carrying a handbag, like a bussiness traveller would have, passed behind me on his way to a table but seemed to take extra time to get past and in doing this his handbag stayed behind me, near my wallet area, for the longest time as possible as he passed. I thought nothing of it at the time except that he was being thoughtful not to disturb me while we were eating.a few days later, after we arrived at our final destination, we checked our email and there was a note to say tere was a transaction on my visa card from the carribean. since we were in Panama that was not our purchase. we called visa and they cancelled the charge, and my card/ I watched a video showing how the scammer had been able to do that without having my physical card. inside the bag is a reader that picks up the signal from the visa card chip. the same chip that is used on the "tap" option at a store. then the scammer uses his electroni eqipment to transfer that to another card and he has a copy of my visa card. the video shows a fellow who stops a lady in the mall, tells her what he wants to do, he walks past he with his bag, showing how he swings his bag forward as he comes close to her, then as he passes her the bag naturally swings behind him but this acton keeps his bag next to her purse for the longest time possible as he seems to naturally walk past. the scanner reads her card and stores her info. then he shows her how he copies that info from her card onto his hotel swipe card, it clearly has the hotel logo on it. then he takes her to the fast food place in the mall and orders a soft drink and uses his hotel card, with her embedded info, to pay for the drink. the clerk doesn't even look at the card just allows it to happen like a normal visa card. then he shows her how those little paper sleeves that are available to slip your card into can make your credit cards safer by blocking the ability of the chip in the card to transmit through the sleeve.
now I use those little sleeves. they can be a pain to get the cards in and out of but better than being scammed or having no visa card on your holiday