Here's some stats I'd like to see...
How many people have used CRC in the last month and how many have experienced card fraud?
The other thread contains 111 individual people's posts. Not all reported fraud. So lets say that 80 people have reported fraud on their accounts.
The issue you have to bear in mind is how many of us on here will have used CRC in the last month. Considering that in the last month over 470,000 people have been to this website. This being a mountain biking website it's highly likely that many tens of thousands of those visitors have used the services of CRC in that time since CRC are the single biggest online retailer of cycling accessories. So far we can say that around 80 people from that group of thousands have experienced fraudulent activities on their accounts. If say (and this is a total guesstimate) 10,000 people have visited this site who have shopped at CRC (2% of site visitors) then 80 reports equates to 0.8%. I'm inclined to think that in the last month many more than 2% of our visitors have shopped at CRC and so that 0.8% to my mind could be a lot smaller.
However, you spin these numbers, so far based on the very anecdotal evidence of people posting on a cycling forum, it's a very small proportion of users who have had any issues with payments.
So far all we have is a small fraction of users of this forum stating that they have experienced two things - shopping at CRC (which is not surprising since this is a bike site) and card fraud. Naturally with each person reporting that they two have shopped at CRC AND experienced some kind of card fraud this appears at first glance to add weight to their suspicions. Whether there is a link between the two is questionable in light of such a tiny sample of data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
A happened before B and therefore A CAUSED B
But then I spend a large proportion of my day looking at numbers and finding trends - That doesn't mean I'm not wrong. But it does make me very wary of drawing conclusions based on what at first glance looks like evidence.