Why is someone sending me socket wrenches in the past?
October 20, 2015 6:02 AM   Subscribe

An auto parts store in Pennsylvania thinks that someone with my email address and phone number, my home address from three years ago, my name from seven years ago, and someone else's credit card number just ordered a socket wrench set. I've gotten the order canceled, but can you help me figure out what's going on?

I woke up to an email from an auto parts store, confirming that I had ordered a $50 socket wrench set. The email and phone number on the confirmation were mine, but the address was almost three years old AND it was under my maiden name, which I haven't used since 2008. The last four digits of the credit card number, though, are not from my credit card or any credit card I remember or that my Gmail history remembers. Besides, there's no extant credit card using that name and that address, and hasn't been for a long time.

I called the store, and the woman said "okay, I can cancel this!" and then tried to hurry me off the phone -- I was like "wait wait but WHY" and she said "all I can tell you is it was ordered online, this has been happening, I don't know." She said she'd put me in as a "bad customer" so "nobody else can order under your name." (Which isn't even my name anymore.) But I'm extremely curious and also a little unnerved!

So I must turn to MeFi. Surely someone knows: what the heck? Is someone just trying to waste this store's time and resources? Apart from pure mischief, I can't imagine why you'd steal a credit card just to send a $50 socket wrench set to someone else. I can't imagine why you'd use your OWN credit card to send a $50 socket wrench set to someone else. I can't imagine why, if you were doing all this, you'd use someone else's contact information, thus tipping them off. The only explanations I can think of are 1) this is a sort of low-tech DNS attack to inconvenience the store, or 2) I just canceled a legitimate order from someone who just happens to have my maiden name and live at my old address. And who thinks my email and phone number are hers.

There have been a couple times in the past when someone has used my contact info to sign up for insurance quotes; I've managed to get off those lists. No idea if this is related -- did I somehow get put in a "use this person's information to annoy them/other people" database?
posted by babelfish to Work & Money (11 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Probably more like "Use this person's information to make a small purchase to check that these stolen credit cards are valid."
posted by supercres at 6:11 AM on October 20, 2015 [7 favorites]


I think it is far more likely that someone has opened a credit account using your old name and address - they probably had your social security number, as well. It sounds like identity theft, and I think you are going to have to contact the credit reporting agencies ASAP.
posted by xeney at 6:14 AM on October 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


Seconding supercres. This happened to me--albeit without socket wrenches!--a few years ago, only with my bank card (grar), and the bank manager explained that this was a common way of identifying whether or not a card would work for bigger scam purposes.
posted by thomas j wise at 6:15 AM on October 20, 2015


Response by poster: Not to threadsit, but -- if they were trying to steal my identity, why would they put my contact information on the account, thus immediately alerting me?
posted by babelfish at 6:25 AM on October 20, 2015


Yes to the above, and/or they are also shipping this (and other?) things to that name/address and then stealing the packages. This has happened to me and is is extremely common, something I discovered after a lengthy conversation with an LAPD detective.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:28 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is probably old-school credit card theft (someone living at your old address got a credit card offer) and not being conducted by rocket scientists. They may have assumed it was a defunct email. If your email is an obvious version of your actual name they may have even just made an unlucky guess.
posted by xeney at 6:46 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


This basically just happened to me a couple months ago. I am equally baffled.
posted by magnetsphere at 7:46 AM on October 20, 2015


This sounds like credit card fraud. I would stop worrying about WHY someone is doing it (because, fraud) and start worrying about protecting yourself. You can begin by requesting a free federal credit check (which you are legally entitled to once a year) and look for any accounts under your name that you did not open yourself.
posted by Brittanie at 8:11 AM on October 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


This is exactly what happened to me, recently, although it was an email alerting me that I had purchased a flower arrangement from a website I'd never been to. The email address, phone number, and street address were correct for a place I haven't lived at in six years.

I did have a T-Mobile account at that time, though, and they recently had a data breach of account information that they used to authenticate credit reports with Experian, one of the large credit agencies.

I also have received random messages over the years resulting from someone attempting to use one of my old addresses to get insurance quotes. Which makes no sense, unless someone was attempting to see if the data was still valid. At that point in time, the address used for the requests was one that I had registered a domain under, and not paid to cloak the registration details. So my name, address, and actual phone number were available to anyone who browsed domain registrations.

In the past I've put a fraud alert on my profile via the major credit reporting companies.
posted by mikeh at 9:22 AM on October 20, 2015


This sounds like a textbook case of identity theft. Check your credit report for fraudulent accounts being opened in your name or your maiden name. Call the three credit reporting agencies and ask them to put a fraud hold on your information - that way when someone tries to open an account using your information, you will know, and you will have to verify / give permission for the account to be opened. (I've never had to do this, so I'm not quite sure how it works, but I have heard this is how pay services such as Life Lock do it.)
posted by tckma at 10:20 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Credit reports all seem fine, thanks for the "fraud hold" info!
posted by babelfish at 7:24 AM on October 21, 2015


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