Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Had one of my credit cards hijacked

This is topic Had one of my credit cards hijacked in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 11-21-2019, 04:36 PM:

I have a bank account and credit card with RBC Bank, which is a US-based bank that's used mostly by Canadians who have business to conduct in the US.

I had a phone call on my answering machine this morning asking me to call them. Turns out someone has charged $8.15 on my credit card to a series of random letters (something like ASDFD LJKIOP, just random letters). Twice. Two charges in one day, each for $8.15. Obviously that's some kind of a fraud, but why would they charge such a small amount? Hardly seems worth their while; if you're going to charge something then take $10,000, not $8.15.

Anyway, they cancelled my card and will send me a new one so that's going to be a bit inconvenient but I guess there's no permanent harm done. I have no idea how my card number got hijacked, though.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 11-21-2019, 04:50 PM:

I understand that small charges are done to verify that the card is good. Of course, this also allows more time for the fraud to be detected before a real big charge appears. My credit union sends me an SMS whenever my ATM card is used, but, last time I checked, my credit card company did not have that capability. That seems like a real easy way to detect fraud quickly. I've had one credit card compromised repeatedly. Each time they disabled it and removed the charges. Even worse, though, I went to file my taxes using Turbo Tax a few years back. It reported that both my state and federal taxes had already been filed. So, I had to talk with the California Franchise Tax Board, the IRS, and the Social Security Administration to straighten it out. The IRS now mails me a PIN to use in filing my taxes. In talking with the IRS, I suggested they not send out any refunds until after April 15, when the tax returns are due, then deal with any duplicates. They did not think people would wait for their refunds.

Anyway, identity theft is a big business! Back on cinema and related topics, I understand there are a LOT of stolen Disney _ logins being sold (and their owners being locked out). From what I've read, this is from people reusing passwords that were previously revealed in data breaches.

Harold

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-21-2019, 05:41 PM:

I had the same thing happen in reverse on Monday.

I did my first completely solo Atmos tune on Tuesday, and while my company had bought all the necessary hardware several months ago, we'd forgotten about the SMAART license. My demo version had long since expired (I installed it to do the Dolby training school about a year and a half ago), so my boss told me to buy the license, install it on my company laptop, and expense it. The attempted payment of $995 to Rational Acoustics was declined, and my card frozen. I suppose that's not unreasonable on their end, although I buy plane tickets and pay hotel bills of several hundred bucks for work trips a few times a year on that card, and those have never been declined. I'm guessing that their system thought that $995.00 was a neat enough figure to arouse suspicion.

Took me the best part of an hour doing battle with their call center to convince them that it was legit. I guess I prefer a false positive to a false negative, but it was still a hassle.

Posted by James Wyrembelski (Member # 9037) on 11-21-2019, 08:42 PM:

quote: Harold Hallikainen
I understand that small charges are done to verify that the card is good. Of course, this also allows more time for the fraud to be detected before a real big charge appears.

This.

Usually small charges are done to see if anyone will notice and if it's valid.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 11-22-2019, 08:12 AM:

Had the same thing happen a couple of years ago. A couple of charges to taxi's, followed by about $500 at Wal-Mart. Fortuneately, my bank warned me and we were able to close the card and cancel all of the charges, though it was a pain.

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 11-22-2019, 09:11 AM:

Leo,

Just curious are you with MIT? What RTA do you normally use? D2? I have found SMAART to be indispensable with the ability to take time measurements and impulse response measurements. I think if you dig into it you will really like it!

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-22-2019, 10:11 AM:

Sean, you and Dustin would get along. My journey on SMAART is just beginning. However my journey with the R2 and D2 is now a long one and it remains my most favorite RTA system. It absolutely has been the most uniform system to use. They are the only ones I know that normalize the microphones to Mic1 so the mic nearest the speaker does not get an exaggerated level. It is so good, you could set up a D2...tune the room...I could come in a week or a year later and measure the room and get essentially the same results without ever knowing where you placed your mics. So long as we both used "reasonable" placements that represent the room (i.e. if you lined yours up right next to each other an I used the traditional staggered diamond, then yes the results will be different but if both were some form of diamond...the results will be essentially the same...within a couple dB on any band). It dispels the claim of EQ only catering to where the mics are as it represents the whole room.

SMAART has the ability to allow one to drill down on things like time alignment where the D2 is quite limited...then again, the D2 can do an analog A-chain [Razz]

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-22-2019, 11:41 AM:

Yes and yes (I'm with MiT and have previously been using a D-2 kit). When time allows, I'm looking forward to getting comfortable with it in more depth than simply following the Dolby training instructions for an Atmos tune via OctaCapture and Beyer reference mics, including using this kit for conventional, 7.1 X-curve tunes. All the Atmos tunes I've done since the training have been playing apprentice to actual Dolby techs, so I only actually needed SMAART for the first time on Tuesday. All went well, though time pressure (I had to get everything done in one day) dictated that I had to rely on the DAD autotune rather than try any finessing. All the speakers and arrays came up green, though, so something must have gone right!

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-22-2019, 12:20 PM:

Note...for DAD (or any Dolby Autotune of modern equipment)...you don't NEED SMAART...it is only "borrowing" the mux and mics...it doesn't actually use SMAART...that is for YOUR eyes. You can actually even use the D2 MUX if you desire...you have to have the AZIO version and start the mux yourself (tell DAD you have just 1 mic).

So riddle me this...how does DAD deal with a multiplexer when it is just sweeping the channel once?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-22-2019, 12:39 PM:

Per the training I attended and the Powerpoints they gave me, SMAART is needed to calibrate the mics before the DAD autotune is done.

I presume that DAD listens to all the mics simultaneously during each sweep, and assumes them to be at the same level of sensitivity, because you have previously calibrated them; unlike the D-2, which listens to each one of them individually in a sequence for 20 seconds (or however long you have it doing for), and then figures out an average response curve for all of them.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-22-2019, 02:39 PM:

The mic calibrator sets the reference tone to calibrate the mics (done in the Octacapture) and then calibrate DAD to that...again, SMAART doesn't interact with DAD in any way. In fact, you need to calibrate SMAART to the mics so it knows what level it is.

Just how do you suppose it is listening to all of the mics? Via some mixer? Since DAD has to know how many mics there are, I presume it is recording all at once and then mathematically summing/normalizing them together.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-23-2019, 07:25 PM:

Looks like this topic about credit card hijacking got hijacked. [Wink]

DAD interfaces with your Octa-Capture using the low-latency ASIO 2.0 driver, which allows it to capture all channels individually on your computer.

The Octa-Capture is more than just a simple muxer, it's a mutli-channel pre-amp, capturing device, compressor, lo-/hi-pass filter, mixer and virtual patch-bay... All the stuff that used up the better part of a 19" flight-case in the past...