Warning: Credit Card Number Stolen from Vaping Supply site

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tA71ana

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I have had it happen twice and got my card canceled. Our bank said it came from online purchases of my e-cig orders. I am setting up a paypal account and hope I can use this. If not I will get a prepaid card. this makes it very hard to order, but I guess its something we have to do to protect our accounts.

Paypal will only work for overseas orders - they do not permit e cig orders originating in/from the US. If you are in the US you can, for instance, order from china or the UK with Paypal, but not within the US.
 

kushka

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Paypal will only work for overseas orders - they do not permit e cig orders originating in/from the US. If you are in the US you can, for instance, order from china or the UK with Paypal, but not within the US.

Liberty Flights and Totally Wicked are both ECF forum suppliers that have sites in the US and ship from the US and bill through PAYPAL.
I have bought from both sites often using Paypal and have been very pleased with them.

The reason they can do this is that they also have sites in the UK, and thus though they ship from their US stores, they bill through their UK site.
 

tA71ana

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Liberty Flights and Totally Wicked are both ECF forum suppliers that have sites in the US and ship from the US and bill through PAYPAL.
I have bought from both sites often using Paypal and have been very pleased with them.

The reason they can do this is that they also have sites in the UK, and thus though they ship from their US stores, they bill through their UK site.

Thanks for clarifying..yes the only way that they can do that is to bill from overseas (I may check them out)
 

Grandma SJA

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I am at a loss as to what to do. I had my card hit twice in 4 months. Set up paypal which really ...... me off to find out I cannot use them. going to go by a prepaid flat rate card and try it. My husband just started vaping and I need to be able to buy his juice without losing my bank account. We do not have anystores around us where you could by and would rather send money order for 1 large purchase than get ripped off again. Very unhappy. Grandma SJA.
 

Orobas

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I had seen a couple threads about this. I thought it might be a good idea to get a pre-paid credit card for online purchases. When I looked into it a bit further I was disappointed. It seems that pre-paid cards have monthly fees plus extra fees that make it not cost effective. If anyone knows of some possible solutions or work-arounds I would be all ears. I only have one credit card and it could pose a substantial liability if compromised.

The ace elite card has a small fee for depositing in person, a couple of bucks.

You can then choose either $1 per transaction or $10 a month, whichever makes more sense for your particular spending habits. And I must also add that they've treated me better than any bank i've ever used. And unlike most banks, you have to opt in for overdraft protection, so if you only put as much as you're about to spend on it at any given time, thieves have nothing to steal. A huge newegg purchase like the example given would have been declined at the source immediately.

A couple bucks a month is a small price to pay for peace of mind.
 

wv2win

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An update: Since I have now read of 3 other ECF members who had their card numbers stolen by using the same site that I used, I will confirm that the site I used where it was stolen was: deleted.

It's either their site or their credit card processing company. They sent me a reply to my email stating my card number could not have been stolen while using their site. I beg to differ and I'm upset that they appear to be unwilling to investigate this issue that has caused problems for a number of their customers.
 
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grandmato5

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Unfortunately there are too many of these reports in the past few weeks for it to be coincidence. There is a major problem somewhere. There is either a person specifically targeting ecig companies websites (ecigexpress specifically being one of them) or someone that has targeted the credit card processor which I'm betting is the same one for all the ecig companies recently involved. I sincerely hope this is being discussed on the vendor board that we can't access.
 

mkbilbo

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Just an fyi: this is a first for me and I have made more online vaping purchases over the last four years than I care to remember, most of them with credit cards and some through paypal.

About 2 months ago I decided to use only one credit card that I had not used in about 3 years for only vaping supply purchases so I could more easily check and track my purchases. Most other online credit card purchases I make are on just a few large sites like Amazon.com. So in the last two months I have only made 7 purchases with the card. I made a purchase last night and the previous purchase before that from a different supplier was on 3/19/13. The purchase last night was the first I had ever made with this well known supplier who specializes in DIY supplies. Well, I got a call about 3 hours ago from newegg.com asking if I had made a $569 purchase. Ofcourse I said no. They stated that the purchase was pending and would be declined. I then went online with my credit card company and saw that no other fraudulent purchases were made, thank goodness. I then called the credit card company and had the card cancelled. I must applaud newegg for their vigilance in calling a possible customer about a large order.

Since my previous purchase with this card was 12 days before and the fraudulent purchase came in less than 15 hours after my purchase yesterday, it seems likely that my information was somehow stolen from this site. I just sent them a contact message on this problem asking them to check their security and contact me.

I'm not trying to put a question mark beside the company I purchased from as I'm sure most sites can be vulnerable to having information stolen. Their site does have a big icon exclaiming their securtiy software. I will be interested as to how they respond to my message. If they don't respond quickly and effectively, I will be letting everyone know.

Anyway, this post is just to let you all know to check your statements carefully and frequently and I would not use a debit card for any online purchase.

Oof. This seems to be happening often lately. I think even though it costs a bit, I'm nabbing a prepaid to use for online...
 

mkbilbo

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Unfortunately there are too many of these reports in the past few weeks for it to be coincidence. There is a major problem somewhere. There is either a person specifically targeting ecig companies websites (ecigexpress specifically being one of them) or someone that has targeted the credit card processor which I'm betting is the same one for all the ecig companies recently involved. I sincerely hope this is being discussed on the vendor board that we can't access.

I doubt it's any particular vendor or type of vendor. Websites use credit card processing services and that's who the thieves go after. I suspect we're seeing more with vape vendors because so many are small businesses and deal with the smaller credit card processing companies that may not be able to fend off attacks as well as the big ones. Or something along those lines.
 

Wow1420

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Thank you for posting the warning.

I dealt with the mentioned vendor within the past month. Checked my CC statement and no bogus charges this month. While I was checking my account I also lowered the dollar amount for them to send me an email when a purchase is posted. I had it set to email me on a purchase above $200. I changed that now to email me on any transaction above $20. (the lowest they allow)

I also stopped at Walmart on the way home and got a Bluebird(Amex) pre-paid card. $5 to start, $1 to adds funds in person, no monthly fees. As a bonus, this will make it easier to stick to a strict budget for vaping supplies from here on out.

I know my credit card has fraud protection, but I have some automatic bill payments coming out of the account and it could be a hassle if the account got tied up temporarily while fraud was being investigated and cleared up.

What I have read is that ecig vendors are forced to use second tier CC processors because many of the major CC processors won't deal with them just because they are e-cig vendors.

While I was at Walmart I noticed they also have pre-paid Visa cards, but the fee is $3 month. I may try that in the future if not enough sites take Amex.
 

cashley

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I have 50 dollars of my check direct deposited on my netspend card every pay day,it is free and sets my budget. My carts are usually loaded and ready so when the money comes in within minutes it is going back out (on what I want not some idiot hacker). I like it this way,no lost money and my budget is prebuilt........I can change my direct deposit info for work myself very easily online so if I need to amp it up for a big nicotine order or something I can do so in like 2 minutes and than reset it after.
 
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