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Here's my guess as to how it happened: I frequently give my credit card to restaurant employees without a second thought. I trust them to use it to just pay for my meal, and not steal its data and offer it up for sale on an IRC channel. Clearly this trust is misplaced.

And your solution? I've heard of people walking with their servers to watch them ring up their bill. I think that's ridiculous.

Besides, if any proper investigation were made into your charges, they could probably tell when the illegal activity started, and track down which restaurant and server it was. Heck, I wonder if the CC companies are smart enough to single out a particular store if their customers seem to have their numbers stolen after shopping there.

I've had my number stolen a couple times. The last time I seemed to get someone who was new to the idea. They signed up for an online dating service, and ordered some beauty supplies and children's reading material, but they had the products shipped to the billing address. I don't know why you'd even bother going through with the purchases. It seems like a big waste of time for the theif.
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Matt