Massive Equifax Data Breach & My 3 Hacked Credit Cards

Equifax Data Breach

In my last post, I talked about my CIBC AC Vonversion Visa Travel credit card that was hacked. Since then, there were 2 other credit cards that were compromised.

One of these two cards had one fraudulent charge and then their fraud detection system shut off the account. The other credit card had about 20 attempted fraudulent charges that were coming from all across the globe, but none of them was successful.

I was puzzled, as there was no connection between these three cards. I never had them together in my wallet or purchased online, one card had only one transaction 4 months ago and the other card had only 2-3 charges at an electronic store and groceries.

The connection became clear to me when Equifax declared that there was a huge data breach that affected 143 million customers. I have plausible reasons to believe that all my affected cards were scammed because of the Equifax breach; the time frame matches and it makes so much sense because that’s the only connection I can see linking these 3 cards together.

Credit card reporting companies like Equifax will never tell you the real story. They won’t tell you up to what level or exactly what sort of information from your files was leaked, or how many credit cards or clients were leaked. They are vague providing any information and I do not trust them with the information they are providing. Also, how can you trust someone who broke your trust in the first place by failing to protect your valuable information?

I have posted a video and in this video, I will discuss all this and will tell you what you should do because of this data breach. The link is here: Massive Equifax Data Breach & What To Do

What Is A Dot Com Lifestyle?

Dot Com Lifestyle

First Published: May 30, 2008 ADawnJournal.com

The post you are about to read is the second in a four-part series. Let me give you the subtitles of these four posts:

1. Do Not Quit Your Job Right After Reading This Article
2. Can Anyone Make A Living Blogging?
3. What Is A Dot Com Lifestyle?
4. What You Need To Become A Successful Blogger?

Part Four is where it gets very interesting. I asked some celebrity bloggers (including Darren Rowse and Steve Pavlina) to answer the following question: What You Need to Become a Successful Blogger? I will be presenting the perspectives these bloggers provided for A Dawn Journal readers. If this is your first time here, you might want to Subscribe to the RSS Feed. Thank you for reading.

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Can Anyone Make A Living Blogging?

Part 3 - What Is A Dot Com Lifestyle?

Warning: Do not quit you job right after reading this article. Do quit once your entrepreneurship starts making more money than your 9 – 5 paycheque .

What Is a Dot Com Lifestyle?

Dot com lifestyle is not about what it sounds like, as you will find out reading the following links. Dot com lifestyle is not about making truck loads of money, driving over-priced cars, eating out everyday at fine restaurants, and visiting a new country every week. While you may be able to achieve some of these I just mentioned, most of the bloggers (or Internet entrepreneurs) have decided to live a simple family-oriented life, just like you and I. However, they have something which we don’t have. They are living on their own terms and they have ridiculously flexible lifestyle choices. What I think of the dot com lifestyle? These are what come to my mind and keep me motivated all the time:

• Work two hours a day and five days a week

• Live in a new country for every six months a year (if you have a family, make it two to four months)

• The whole world is your office (you can work anywhere as long as you have your laptop and internet connection)

• Live on your own terms

• Have ridiculously flexible lifestyle choices

Now, let’s look at the dot com lifestyle of some actual people who are already living it:

John Chow – A Canadian Blogger residing in Richmond, BC

The Dot Com Lifestyle

Nick Ramsay – Lives in Japan with his wife and one child. Her Japanese wife picked up one English phrase very quickly: “I am not your maid!”

My Dot Com Lifestyle in Japan

Bob Buskirk – A 21 year old Internet entrepreneur living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And yes, there are even 18 year olds and younger living a dot com lifestyle as well.

Living the Dot Com Lifestyle

Steve Pavlina – Personal Development Guru. His website gets more than 2 million visitors per month. This article is little different than those mentioned above.

10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job

CIBC Air Canada Card Was Compromised

CIBC AC Conversion Visa Prepaid Card

About 2 weeks ago, I found out that my CIBC AC Prepaid Visa card was compromised. However, this card was never stolen or lost.

When trying to load my card online, I noticed scammers made 9 fraudulent transactions. The small transactions were made via PayPal and 2 large transactions were made from Malaysia. One of these was Expedia Malaysia and the other one was an airfare purchase from Malaysia.

CIBC is not the back office for this card. A third party prepaid credit card provider I2C (http://www.i2cinc.com/) in California is the back office and provides support maintaining this card and they don’t take calls, so I had to talk to CIBC customer service and file a complaint form. I was told that it could take up to 40 days to complete the investigation and reverse those charges.

The reason I use this card is because I can control how much credit availability the card can have and it’s especially handy when you are travelling. So scammers were able to extract only around $200 due to low availability.

What surprised me most is that I2C’s fraud detection system totally failed, as there were 9 transactions and they raised no flags whatsoever. In the past, I dealt with fraudulent activities on my credit cards and their systems flagged and blocked my cards after 1 or 2 transactions. After 9 transactions, my AC Conversion card had no more balance left for the scammers to take out and that’s why it stopped. No fraud detection system stopped it.

I will link a video I made on this on the top left and here: My Travel Visa Card Was Compromised. I will give some tips to help you protect yourself from credit card scams in that video as well.

Do Not Quit Your Job Right After Reading This Article

Do Not Quit Job

The post you are about to read is the first in a four-part series. Let me give you the subtitles of these four posts:

1. 1. Do Not Quit Your Job Right After Reading This Article

2. Can Anyone Make A Living Blogging?
3.  What Is A Dot Com Lifestyle?
4. What You Need To Become A Successful Blogger?

Part Four is where it gets very interesting. I asked some celebrity bloggers (including Darren Rowse and Steve Pavlina) to answer the following question: What You Need to Become a Successful Blogger? I will be presenting the perspectives these bloggers provided for A Dawn Journal readers. If this is your first time here, you might want to Subscribe to the RSS Feed. Thank you for reading.
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Can Anyone Make A Living Blogging?

First Published: May 25, 2008 ADawnJournal.com

Part 1 - Do Not Quit Your Job Right After Reading This Article

Warning: Do not quit you job right after reading this article. Do quit once your entrepreneurship starts making more money than your 9 – 5 paycheque.

We all know that successful blogs or websites can make tremendous amounts of money.

Here’s a list of sites that are making loads of money.

Boing Boing

Makes over $1 million a year.

Mashable

This technology blog makes roughly $165,000 a month.

Darren Rowse

Estimated earnings between $120,000 to $1,200,000. He pioneered moneymaking techniques in blogging.

Steve Pavlina

Personal Development Guru. He makes $480,000 annually from blogging activities.

Plenty of Fish

Markus Frind, a Canadian, makes $5 to $10 million a year from this free dating site.

Ashley Qualls

Seventeen year old high school dropout makes $75,000 a month from her website.

The list goes on. If you are interested in finding out more about how much money webmasters/bloggers make – check out Paula’s list of blogger salaries.

After successfully running my two websites (www.adawnjournal.com and www.adawn.net) for more than a year, I have come to the conclusion that the Internet opens up endless possibilities and diverse opportunities to make money from blogging and Internet businesses. Although I have an idea of how Internet businesses work, I am not going to talk about it simply because I do not own and am not planning to start any one anytime soon. Today, I am going to discuss whether it is possible for anyone to make a living blogging.

Part 2 - Can Anyone Make A Living Blogging?

Yes, anyone can do this. In order to live a dot com lifestyle, you need to have a few things, and I am coming to that. I know what you are thinking … if this is so easy, why isn’t everyone doing it? I think the simple answer is because we are programmed to think inside the box, i.e. work the traditional 9 to 5 job for your whole life and retire when you are old. Also, most of us don’t even think to try something different. If you gather 100 people and tell them that they can make a living blogging, you might get only 1 to give it a try. The other 99 might dismiss it with the assumption that that this it is too good to be true and that it’s not achievable for them. We are often afraid to try something new and unwilling to leave our traditional comfort zone. Those who are not afraid to try something new, and have determination, confidence, and belief in themselves can make a living blogging.

Tuesday Is Not The Best Day to Buy Plane Tickets

Best Days to Buy Flight Tickets

For decades, we have been told that Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days to buy plane tickets. However, recent research shows otherwise. The reason in the past Tuesdays and Wednesdays were the best days because that’s when sale fares came out and airlines were trying to beat each other with manual intervention and flash sales.

New data and research from airfare forecasting company Hopper shows that Thursdays are the best days to buy tickets. The same research mentions that Sundays are the worst day to buy tickets. However, a lot of other research points towards different directions.

Another research from Texas A&M University shows that weekends are the best days to book tickets. The reason behind this is that airlines try to lower fares on the weekend to catch leisure travelers.

Research from the Wall Street Journal mentions that Sundays are the best days to buy tickets. The same research points out that Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays are the most expensive days to plane tickets.

Research from Expedia and the Airlines Reporting Corporation shows that Sundays are the best days to buy plane tickets when you buy at least 21 days in advance. Weekends are also a good time to buy tickets, but not Fridays.

All these findings can be confusing. So the best thing to do is to keep an eye on your fare for longer and usually fares are lower six weeks prior to your departure date. So keep an eye out and grab whenever you feel they are the lowest. And in general, check them often on Saturdays and Sundays.

Some websites you can use to check your fares are Google Flight, Kayak, Hipmunk, and Skyscanner.