I just got a call from my credit card company asking about suspicious activity on my account. Someone tried to make several in-store purchases using my credit card number at a Wal Mart today...apparently it was declined twice and then approved, which flagged the credit card company to call me. The spooky thing is that when I looked up the Wal Mart store number, it is about 2 miles from my house, and is one I have shopped at (regretably) multiple times.

So tell me...how does one make an in-store purchase using a credit card they do not have physical possession of (I have the one and only card in my wallet). Do they steal the card number somehow and then imprint it on a dummy card that they can swipe in-store? If so, then it's extremely suspicious to me that this happened so close to my house, and makes me believe my card number was obtained using a skimmer, rather than being stolen from a database. What are the odds that the hacker would be within the same geographical location as me?

So how does this tie to Little Caesar's, you ask? This is a credit card that I ONLY use for food purchases, because I get 3% cash back on all dining transactions. So I looked at my statement...and Little Caesar's sticks out like a sore thumb as the only time I've been somewhere that I didn't physically swipe the card myself, or see the cashier do it with my own eyes. When you go through the drive-through, you have to hand the card to the cashier behind the window, and you can't see the swipe take place. I suspect one of the retreads working at Little Caesar's installed a skimmer on their card machine and has been collecting card numbers.

What say you, Lounge?

P.S. - please do not disappoint me with your back stories. I demand to be entertained!