This really happened believe it or not. It is not ElastaGirl pretending to be me or someone named Identity Chick emerging on the scene. I had my one bank/credit card counterfited used for transactions and draining my bank account to well below zero.

I knew something was wrong when on friday I got a call from Visa's fraud center asking me to call them about some suspicious activities. I had gone through this before - it was when i had bought domain names from a france based seller and they had called to check with me that indeed I had bought something from france. I was not worried and figured this time would be something similar.

I waited a day to get back to them and called on Saturday night. They wanted to review about 30 transactions on my card...many were things I remembered. One was for sure not me $321 from Macys in Pleasanton (a suburb over the Oakland Hills) on Jan 26th the day I was at etel (in Burlingame that day). They said my card was turned off after this transaction. So I am thinking that I have only $321 of fraud to deal with.

That day I had $1300 in my bank account (I know cause I withdrew $100 that morning).

Monday morning I had negative 1300 in my account.

It is emotionally awful. Who could have gotten it where. Is it 'just my VISA number'? What if they know more about me - my birth date (is that anywhere on the internet publicly I wonder?)

Do I have to close my account cause the know how to access it? If I do that am I really safe? Who to trust now? is a question arising in me.