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It’s gorgeous around here this time of the year in Minnesota (mid October!).  In what is considered the coldest state in the continental US, a mid October weekend of mid 50s was amazing.
However, it was marred by one significant event which, apparently, ruined a lot of people’s days.

What I’m talking about are two companies that join the rank of human scum – scammers Assistuhelp.com and BSBD Online (I have no idea what website BSBD operates).
On Saturday some friends and I were just hanging out, and I happened to check my account balance which I tend to do from time to time.  I noticed I was about $70 short in my account, and checked my history.  To my surprise, I found two charges in the amounts of $38.88 and $29.89 sitting in my pending transactions.  After doing some digging, I found Assistuhelp.com to be, what looked like, a company similar to CCbill and other credit card processors for various online transactions.  I couldn’t even find a website for BSBD Online, which was the 3rd red flag in this whole ordeal (the first two being that I didn’t authorize these two transactions).

I called my bank, and, for what seems like the first time, they were on my side and helped me out immensely.  When I called to dispute these charges, the person on the other end immediately knew what two I was having an issue with, and certainly didn’t have a problem transferring me to the fraud department, where they promptly reversed both charges, canceled my card, and got me set up with a new card.  Thankfully I caught it when I did, and not a couple days later, or after I had paid some bills or any other situations that could have happened.

When I got home, I did some research and found several websites with thousands of people complaining about these scumbags.  And it all sounded like most of these transactions went out in the last couple of days, one site’s comments started around 2 days before my card got hit, so from what I can tell, these are new scams.
The internet is full of people who like to exaggerate and pretend to be something they aren’t; but I’m certain that many of the compaints I read regarding these scams were true and many people had their accounts put negative and incurred overdraft fees because of it.

What tops all this off, is that these credit card transactions are for, from what I can tell, pornography websites.  Now, if are in a situation where pornography is offensive to you or your loved ones/significant others, this can cause even more stress and emotional turmoil on top of getting your transactions reversed, getting your card canceled and your money back and having to start over fresh with a new card.

Obviously insert guidelines for the internet here -
Don’t use your card number on sites without a secure transaction option (usually indicated by a security lock and also a https:// address for checkout.
Don’t use your card on a site you don’t trust or don’t feel comfortable with using.  If they don’t have a contact us email and/or phone number (my preference is the phone number) easily visible and accessible, it might not be worth the trouble.
Make sure to watch your bank account online daily.  These scum think that they’ll hit thousands of people (probably bought a list of card numbers from an even bigger scumbag who sells them) and hope that some of these transactions will stick because not everyone will notice the $70 missing from their account.

Just be careful online, it’s a scary world out there when you get away from the top 100 sites or so.

Not trying to be pushy, but if you find yourself in need of camera repair or know somebody who does please check out the one truly affordable digital camera repair shop I have found anywhere on the internet: Darntoothysam.com.