Did you know that there's a thing called the "Automatic Billing Update" program (ABU), that enables merchants to get notified of your replacement payment card number before it even shows up in your mailbox?
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Did you know that there's a thing called the "Automatic Billing Update" program (ABU), that enables merchants to get notified of your replacement payment card number before it even shows up in your mailbox?
The little-known credit card program that lets companies share your information - Winnipeg | Globalnews.ca
A Winnipeg man says a little-known program allowed his credit card company to share his credit card number with a merchant before he even had the card himself.
CJOB (globalnews.ca)
Yep, you can guess what the bad guys are doing. They're registering as a merchant and then involuntarily signing people up for nonexistent "subscriptions" ... that their support path mysteriously refuses to let you unsubscribe from:
But if you naively report these to your issuer as simply 'fraud', they will just ... issue you a new card. And then the "subscription" will be charged again.
Many issuer support teams seem be totally unaware of this fraud type. You have to explicitly tell them it's a subscription scam, and ask them block that merchant from using ABU to get your new card number. (That card is lost, but at least the evil merchant won't get the next one).
(I found this out the hard way, helping some elderly friends, whose cards kept getting mysteriously "compromised". When I realized that an unexpected charge happened before they had even received the new card ... I knew it wasn't just ordinary skimming or phishing.)
tl;dr When you detect unauthorized charges, ask your issuer to check for ABU and block the entire merchant. Otherwise, you'll be caught in an unending cycle of useless reissuance!
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