I use a visa gift card to pay for an anonymous (annual) subscription. I bought one with a little extra money because I wasn't sure the subscription would charge for tax or not. It didn't so I figured I could use the extra money to pay for another month or so after the annual subscription expired.

Well, apparently over the course of the year, someone was able to hack my card and use the extra funds.

How does this happen? The card was used online only and only once. Hasn't been touched for a year. How do they use the card if they need to know the card number, expiration date and the CVV security code?

It wasn't much and I'm not going to follow-up. But how does this happen? I imagine that the subscription provider's system is not secure? Or can they be secure and this is happening through other methods?

Pisses me off.

Do the funds on that card expire after a set amount of time, or start costing a monthly fee?

I've seen gift cards that have that in their fine print. Something like: "If there are remaining funds after 12 months from the date of issue, the card's balance will begin being charged a $4.99 monthly service fee."

So if you go long enough without spending it all, your balance eventually gets drained to $0 after enough time has passed.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Do the funds on that card expire after a set amount of time, or start costing a monthly fee?

I've seen gift cards that have that in their fine print. Something like: "If there are remaining funds after 12 months from the date of issue, the card's balance will begin being charged a $4.99 monthly service fee."

So if you go long enough without spending it all, your balance eventually gets drained to $0 after enough time has passed.

True of all the gift cards I've seen.

I received one that had already been hacked

I called the number on the back and they verified the card# and CVV#. They said someone used it to rent a car and they would send me a new one, which they did

It does sound like the lack of use kicked started the monthly fee which drained the funds.

Check your card. It should state if there is a fee for lack of use

Transaction history indicates Msft Xbox. Lots of attempts for various things. But only the transaction that was under the balance passed.

Then yep, it sounds like someone got a hold of the card's information, same as any other stolen/hacked credit card info.

It's most likely that this happened via a breach at either the card issuer's system or at the system of the subscription provider with which you used it before.

Or it's less likely but possible that you have something like a piece of malware on your computer that allows them to peek at your keyboard usage or online traffic and they used that to grab the card info.

I had something like that happen to me with a Starbucks card. I was able to get a new card from them with my balance restored.