Went online this morning to book 2 Go Ape gift vouchers from Go Ape online .
Use my debit card ( i know ok , i know ) and the transaction went through pretty much normally.
After checkout a new screen with ‘Your card supplier is verifying this payment ‘ opened up.
The verified by Visa pop – up came on screen for a second then disappeared . In the old days you had to log in and supply a password but i found aout that this has since ended.

Got a bing to say new Email arrived . Checked Inbox expecting receipt from Go Ape. Nope. New mail in Spam.
Email from Cards @ VerifiedbyVisa .com saying my card has been used in a fraudalant way and has been suspended? If I wanted to use my card ‘clicky click’ here to lift the suspension.
Meanwhile Outlook is flashing warnings up , so I google the addy and nothing legit comes up.

Rang Lllloyds bank. Spoke with girl on phone who checked the payment has gone through , Yes fine , and the account had not been suspended .- No it hadn’t.

She thought that the spam email was coincidence and arrived about 5 seconds after checkout .She said it obviously wasnt linked to the Go Ape website as the email said credit card and I had used a debit card . Just coincidence. Yeah right. I asked if she / Llllloyds visa were going to follow it up . Nope .

So a quick roll through my spam box and there are no other emails from Verifiedbyvisa, lots of Viagra and male enhancemnt and hook up rubbish .

I have emailed Go Ape and explained the same , no reply as its a sunday.
I have since used my debit card, no problemos there.
Full AVG and Microsoft security essentials scan showed up nothing on my laptop.

Could it be a coincidence really or more likely a security issue somewhere with a way somebody could access my transaction ?

Probably coincidence and you did all the right stuff.

edit – the bit with the verified by visa popping up and then disappearing is quite a common experience and results from your transaction being automatically approved without need for v by v: these verification schemes are being phased out.

Probably a coincidence. I just had an email saying my PayPal was suspended after making a payment. Apparently “the ?rocces ta?e usual? about three minutes ?lease understand that those ?roceedings ?ere been ta?en to garantie ?our online safet? “. Possibly fake

I bloody well hope they do, the verified by Visa process is a pile of shit, I ended up having to make up about 6 passwords for the damm thing and I absolutely detest the shitty system.

Get rid of the verified by Visa process that is.

These things are worrying aren’t they. I guess all you can do is keep a very close eye on transactions. So reassuring, not, that the bank were disinterested.

My card was blocked today. I called my card provider and, give them their due, they are pretty hot at picking up anything dodgy.

I guess we all need to be extra careful at this time of year.

a few years back the verified by visa thing emailing me was what alerted me to my cc being done. totally pointless system, I could never remember the password, it allowed you to change it there and then and happily carry on. it was always emailing me to tell me I’d changed my password, till one morning I def hadn’t. phoning the bank direct is always the way to go though.

That is probably not a coincidence. I would be rebuilding my computer having run a load of anti-virus if I were you. My guess is some kind of man in the middle attack that harvested some of your card details but not all. If you were to have followed the link then you would be requested to supply the missing info.

Edit: not an expert just paranoid.