I logged into monoprice today and saw the following message:

Incident Background: Some of our customers recently reported to us that information from credit cards they used on the Monoprice website had been misused.

Our outside investigators have continued to review log files from our Internet-facing servers. They have not found evidence of any successful attempts to penetrate our computer system. Our internal IT staff found some suspicious files on one of our quarantined Web servers while they were reviewing files to build replacement servers.

We have identified the suspicious files to our outside investigators so that they can extract the files from the image of our servers that they made earlier. We asked them to let us know if the suspicious files are significant. We will post more information here about the investigation when we have it.

We are taking steps to re-launch our site early next week. We will not take credit card payments on the site initially but will take payments through PayPal Express and Google Checkout. We will let you know when the site is available. Thank you for your continued support.

For more update, please check our Facebook out.

Yikes, I hope my CC number wasn't used by a hacker or something!

If you purchased for them in say the last 2-4 weeks I would check your statements before you receive your monthly bill at the end of the month for any fraudulent charges. It seems pretty serious and widespread.

Interesting. I shop from Monoprice too sometimes, though it's been a while...

Just keep an eye on your account. So long as it's a credit card and not a debit card, you really don't have a lot to worry about. Every major credit card has 100% fraud protection these days. And if you're really worried, just call the bank and explain the situation. They can immediately cancel the card and send you a new one with a different number.

A debit card can be more problematic, especially if it's linked to your 'main' checking account. I have a friend who's debit card was compromised. He was covered by his bank's fraud protection, and everything was ok after a few days. But waking up one morning and not being able to buy groceries because his checking account was overdrawn because someone else went on a shopping spree wasn't a good feeling.

If your credit card company offers it, sign up to have account alerts emailed to you. I use one card to do all of my online shopping. I've got it set up through the bank to email me whenever *any* activity occurs on it. Gives me a confirmation that charges and payments went through properly, and also the peace-of-mind that if the card is compromised I will be alerted and can react quickly.

It was very responsible of Monoprice. Since people shopping at monoprice are heavy online shoppers, this could have come from a very large number of online card processing institutions. But Monoprice seems to be the only ones taking their reputation seriously enough to act on the info.

The last purchase I made was around mid december... don't remember if I used a debit or credit card... time to find out. grrrr.

just checked and I used my debit card. Does anyone know if the fraudulent charges are only showing up for people who purchased within the last few weeks, or is it longer?

Are the charges showing up for a specific amount, from a specific seller, ect.?

Thanks.

Hi terzaghi,

From my research it seems customer information has been compromised for those that placed orders during the last few weeks of February up until the point monoprice stopped taking orders in early March. I havn't heard of anyone having information compromised before these dates - not that I have heard of.

Monoprice has been very upfront through this process over the past week or so with their FaceBook reports....

I called and they gave me very little info, but told me to send all questions to support@monoprice.com.

Should hear back within 1 business day they say.

That's the one positive about never having more than $36.12 in all your accounts put together, like me. (And that's on payday.)

These things don't worry me alot.

I have had my debit card compromised twice, and my credit card once... And I thought I was being careful, to be honest. My Visa card, someone spent $4200 on it in Kenya (lol). I got a call from Visa within minutes asking if I was in Africa, and immediately knew what was going on. My debit card both times they withdrew $400 out of an ATM (max for a day). I had the money back in my account within 48 hours both times.

[quote=Potatohead]I have had my debit card compromised twice, and my credit card once... And I thought I was being careful, to be honest. My Visa card, someone spent $4200 on it in Kenya (lol). I got a call from Visa within minutes asking if I was in Africa, and immediately knew what was going on. My debit card both times they withdrew $400 out of an ATM (max for a day). I had the money back in my account within 48 hours both times. [/quote

I had the same deal on my company Visa. Got the call, was surprised Visa called me direct and not accounting or finance.

"Sir, are you in Dubai, and are you flying to ....... did you purchase this ticket for $3,800.00"

Had a new card in 2 days

I had my VISA compromised about 2 months back, a security firm out of Montreal called up and asked me if I had made some kind of donation to an organization in the States(I forget how much) to which I let them know I hadn't. They said they had figured it was bogus so they had stopped any payment or further activity on the card. Actually, nothing like this had ever happened to me with a credit card and my concern was that the call from Montreal was some kind of setup, but I confirmed it with my bank the next morning and they issued a new card. My buddy had his card compromised about 4 months prior to mine which made me wonder about one of our local gas stations that we both use...

If I fill up with gas twice in a 24 hour period (which I do often) my Visa debit card gets denied at the pump due to being a 'frequent user' so I have to go inside, present my I.D. and sign.

I like that.

I once stopped by Best Buy on the way home from work just before noon on a Saturday and the CC machine kept denying my card, finally Little Miss Dimwitted checkout girl says "Oh, that machine isn't working right ... a couple of the number keys have been sticking all morning". So here I go hauling azz out the door and speeding through traffic to reach my bank before noon so that I can reinstate my debit card.

I didn't like that.

Sometimes, it's good, sometimes they are too strict. I actually forgot about one time about six or seven years ago my debit card was cut off when I was out of town (only a four hour drive away) because they thought it was compromised... They didn't even call, so that was annoying. I was actually back up in the same spot (same gas station even) this last weekend and had no problems at all with it.

I am alwayd sure to call Visa/MC from now on whenever I am going anywhere more than a few hours out of town. I used both card in Europe a couple summers ago without issue. Although, I only used my Visa once, with Trafalgar's office to pay for day trips, and the Kenya thing happened three weeks later, which is suspicious to me. I had had that same card number for probably five or six years before that. Oh well.