For the past decade my Buy Me A Coffee account got an average of one donation every one or two years.'nBut over the past week or so I got 3 donations of $6 or $9 each.

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

For the past decade my Buy Me A Coffee account got an average of one donation every one or two years.

But over the past week or so I got 3 donations of $6 or $9 each. All the transactions come from Hotmail addresses with usernames consisting of random sequences of letters and numbers, associated with Mastercard cards and accounts at the same bank.

This looks off and I reported it to Buy Me A Coffee but I'm wondering whether it's just me.

#BuyMeACoffee

[extelec@mstdn.social]

@amoroso I see this regularly with web sites. Usually (I think) its people with stolen card credentials testing them to see if the card works, before a MAJOR purchase. I suspect its safer for them this way.

I've contacted merchants about this happening, (especially the ones that succeeded) and they are 100% totally disinterested.

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

@Extelec Yeah, that's what I suspected.

[deltawye@tiggi.es]

@Extelec @amoroso Ugh. Not surprised though. If you ever got a big chunk I’d wait on using the money to verify it wasn’t fraud. Probably not a bad idea to report these anyways so there is a paper trail with the company.

(I remember stories about people who got erroneous deposits in their bank account, immediately withdrew and spent the cash, and were Surprised Pikachu Face when they ended up being on the hook for the tens of thousands of dollars they spent.)

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

@DeltaWye In this case it's a couple dozen $ in all.

@Extelec