I woke up Sunday morning only to discover that my privacy had been compromised!

Like most mornings, I checked the daily amount of spam and other emails that we had received from various solicited and unsolicited sources, and one of these were from the  lovely fully automated and unpersonal bank support team.  They kindly notified me that suspicious activities had been encountered on my account, and as a result they had blocked the account.

I wonder if it was the Danish cheese that I had attempted to buy online from ‘Fætter Kras og Lugtesvend” or perhaps the inflatable “toys” we had bought for the pool we don’t own.

In fact it was neither.  Some fecking idiot had somehow managed to get my credit card details and had attempted to buy surf gear in LA and bodybuilding supplies in Idaho.  This makes me wonder why my card would’ve been used which could be compromised by some evil villain device; gas station, supermarket, sandwich shop.

Given that I had used the credit card locally Saturday afternoon, and that it’s physically impossible to get to LA and back (approx. 2800 miles/4500 km), and that I had not purchased any flight tickets to the West Coast either, I think it was safe to assume that I had not bought this gear.  Another obvious point, I’m far from being a bodybuilder!

The next 12 minutes were spent navigating through a very annoying automated phone support, who would attempt to understand my grief by analyzing my voice patterns and provide me with some satisfaction based on these patterns and then deliver the next options.

• Do they think it’s amusing to deal with a computer voice and system?
• Is it not possible that the system is hacked and just recording all the bank details you attempt to key in on the handset?
• There’s no go back button when entering in account details incorrectly!
• There is no spoon!
• Why the hell was the guy so overly polite, energetic and supportive, once I got through to a human?
• Was he really human or was it it merely H.A.L. 9000 taking over?
• What did they buy in the surf shop?
• Would the bodybuilding gear help develop their muscles?

All these questions floated around in my head on this beautiful Sunday morning at around 7.30am.  Thankfully the guy “fixed” the security issue by saying that he had to close my card and re-issue new card.  Only catch is, it would take 5-7 business days to arrive, which meant no more purchases – it’s one way to save money.

Monday morning I visited my local bank branch, spoke to a real person and she kindly issued me with a replacement card.  At least that would allow me to spend all my hard-earned money … ha ha ha, who am I kidding.

To make matters worse, it wasn’t only my card that had been compromised.  My dear wife’s card had the same suspicious activities, which made me think “was it her trying to buy me cool gear?”.

But, because of her card being closed too, our day trip we had started after resolving my case, was somewhat hampered.  We couldn’t take out cash and the places we visited were not accepting credit cards!

So, what did we learn that weekend?  It’s time to bring back the barter system, trading goods and other valuables, which cutting up devil’s work – the credit cards.  Whatever happened to using cash as we did in the past.  It’s a Government conspiracy to get people into debt!  But how much bodybuilding gear can I use for trading with an iPad?