Most of us know fraud exists. There have been hucksters and flimflam artists for as long as men have accumulated wealth. There are Catfisher, and Phishers, Nigerian Princes, Hong Kong doctors who want your bank account so they can wire you money, and people who really want to be you. Sometimes, they use your name by hacking your email and asking friends and family to send money to some far away place because you’ve been robbed and can’t get home (but somehow you have the ability to send mass emails to everyone asking for help—go figure.)

Sometimes things in the digital age go wrong because of user error and there isn’t much you can do about. I went to renew my Maryland Driver’s license and was told I couldn’t because my D.C. License had been suspended. I tried to explain that was impossible because a) I had a valid Maryland license for five years and when I got it the first time, my D.C. License hadn’t been suspended, but b) more importantly, I’d lived somewhere else after D.C., but before Maryland. That other state gave me a license and that is what I used to get my MD license.

The clerk was like, look, computers don’t lie. You need to go to DC and figure it out. Turns outs (after five hours at the D.C. DMV), 6 years AFTER I’d moved and turned in my license, a cop gave a 27-year-old African American female named Tawana a ticket. The last two digits of her license were 28. The last two of my old one were 82. It took forever to get that sorted and it was so clear I wasn’t her. Imagine if it had been a middle aged white guy whose license was close in number to mine. (Forget how they managed to reach back six years to give me a ticket on a license I didn’t have, that had expired and wasn’t supposed to be in operation, because no one could explain that.) So yeah, life in the digital age is wonderful

As some know, I work in law enforcement. I’ve seen hard examples of this happen. Identity theft is real, but that’s not really what I’m going to talk about because that would take terabytes of bandwidth to fully cover. This is more basic; how vigilant are you about your information? Do you check where you are when you use wi-fi? Do you click, “yes” for that free offer without really checking it out because you really just want to do this or that? What promoted the AQG-Public Service Announcement? I like to think I’m fairly cautious, but I got a not too subtle reminder this week that I’m not as diligent as I thought.

I pay most if not all of my bills on line. My bank allows it, credit cards encourage it, and most merchants with recurring bills are happy to bill you monthly via a credit card. Typically, before I pay a bill I review the charges. I’ve found a few along the way I don’t recognize and I’ve called them in. As far as I can remember I’ve always made the purchases for which I was charged, but the company bills using a different name. Sorta like how Joe’s Diner bills under the corporate name. At least I thought I was vigilant until this week.

Let me start by saying, I don’t buy porn. (though I know many of you will roll your eyes and say ‘yeah, right,’) Not on the web or in stores. I don’t stream it, or have a monthly subscription. I don’t use on line betting, or any of the other types of services that the anonymity of the web have given new life to. I don’t have the extra money, I have a child in pre-school. (I see many of you nodding right now at how much of a bank account drainer that is.) In theory, that should limit the likelihood I’ll have a problem, and it has.

Imagine my surprise this weekend when I sat down and checked my bill and saw a subscription to a music service. I had one of those, WTF? moments. I searched them on line and it was a legit service so I asked myself, ‘did I sign up for that?’ I didn’t remember doing that. It doesn’t sound like something I’d do. I don’t like monthly subscriptions for services. Having three cell phones (I carry a family member on my service) on my account, I see how quickly tiny little monthly fees add up. My website is self hosted now, where before I paid WordPress for their bundle, I upgraded the site and needed to buy a monthly hosting plan. Want security? That’s $24.00 a year ($2.00 a month). Want to hide your identity so people can’t search for who owns andrewqgordon.com? That’s another $12.00 ($1.00 a month). Suddenly that $60.00 a year plan is almost $100.00. Which is why I’m not good with monthly recurring fees.

I tried to log in so I could cancel the subscription, but since I had no recollection of signing up, I had no idea what was my user name. No problem they say, give us the Facebook account and we’ll sign you in. (and like many ‘services’ they make it easy, sign up with your Facebook account.) “Ah ha!” I said, “That’s how I did this.” (Ignoring for the moment the fact that just because I signed in with FB, the company wouldn’t have had my Credit Card info.) Sure enough, I could sign in, but they asked me to sign up for a monthly subscription. Clearly I hadn’t signed up via Facebook.

Next I tried their, ‘give us the user name or email and we’ll reset your password’ feature. That’s great IF I knew the user name. O_o If I had that, then I’d have known I signed up. But, you say, ‘give them your email. Surely you know your email.’ Yes I do, and curiously, despite needing an email to sign up, they had no record of any of my emails. Now I knew, I hadn’t done this.

If you’re like me, you get a bit anxious when this happens. You feel angry, annoyed, violated and a bit scared of what else you may have missed. I’m going to use that as an excuse for what I did next. I started to search for a way to end my subscription. {I can see more major eye rolls from you all.} After filling out half their web form—naturally they don’t take phone cancelations—I realized, they can’t cancel my account if I don’t know my account. That’s when I called my credit card company.

So here I was all proud of myself; my diligent check of my bills caught this fraud. Yay AQG! Then I started to look at prior months. My smug self-righteousness evaporated quickly as I worked my way back. April? Yep, there it was. March? Yes. February? Fuck, there it was again. January? December? November? October? Eight fucking months I’d missed this? You betcha. Self-righteous AQG, meet stupid Andrew, the one who never checked closely.

Fortunately, my credit card company, Chase, is great. They reversed the charges. But they had to cancel my card to do it. That creates more headaches, but I got my $80.00 back, andhonestly, I didn’t expect that. All I really wanted was to dispute the most recent one and stop it going forward, so this tale has a semi happy ending.

The point is, this kinda stuff happens. A lot. Think it’s just sketchy, back room places that people don’t want others to know they frequent (like porn)? Guess again. Paypal was hit with a $25 million fine for illegally signing up people for credit cards and charging fees. Wells Fargo is being sued by Los Angles because their employees would open unauthorized accounts that charged fees for people who didn’t request it. Wireless phone companies, Sprint and Verizon just settled a suit that alleged they were ‘cramming’ customers. (That’s charging them fees for services the customer never requested.) AT&T has settled one of these too.

Big, ‘respected’, ‘legit’ places do it all the time. It is up to those of us who use on-line services—and let’s be honest, if you’re here, you probably do a ton of on-line purchases—to be vigilant. It’s the only way to stop it.

Of course, there is still nothing you can do to prevent a cop from giving you someone else’s ticket. Just call me Tawana.

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Andrew Q. Gordon wrote his first story back when yellow legal pads, ball point pens were common and a Smith Corona correctable typewriter was considered high tech. Adapting with technology, he now takes his MacBook somewhere quiet when he wants to write.

He currently lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his partner of Twenty years, their daughter and dog. In addition to dodging some very self-important D.C. ‘insiders’, Andrew uses his commute to catch up on his reading. When not working or writing, he enjoys soccer, high fantasy, baseball and seeing how much coffee he can drink in a day.

Follow Andrew:

website: www.andrewqgordon.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/andrewqugordon

Twitter: @andrewqgordon

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AndrewQGordon

email: andrewqgordon@gmail.com

Books:

The Last Grand Master: (Champion of the Gods – Book 1);

The Eye and the Arm: (Champion of the Gods – Book 2):

Purpose:

(Un)Masked:

Ashes of Life:A Closed Door: