Beware: Reports Of Fraudulent Charges On Cards Used At GiftCardMall

If you’ve bought gift cards at any point during the past year from GiftCardMall, you’ll want to check the statements of any credit cards you used to pay for those orders. That’s because there’s an increasing number of reports that cards used at GiftCardMall have become compromised and used for fraudulent purchases.

Doctor of Credit had covered this last week after seeing reports on Reddit that credit cards used on GiftCardMall had subsequently been used for fraudulent transactions.

Ariana at PointChaser then published a post today detailing her recent experiences. It looks like at least five cards belonging to her and her family members were used for fraudulent charges worth almost $3,000, so this isn’t an isolated incident.

What GiftCardMall Purchase Dates Are Affected?

This isn’t entirely clear. Based on the increasing number of reports in the last nine or ten days, I’d be most concerned if I’d bought anything from GiftCardMall since mid-May 2019.

Having said that, data points in the comments section on the Doctor of Credit thread suggests this issue might have been around for a year or more.

Is GiftCards.com affected?

Blackhawk Network owns GiftCardMall and GiftCards.com, both of which are popular with people wanting to buy gift cards online. We’ve only seen reports of fraudulent charges resulting from purchases at GiftCardMall, so there’s no indication at this point in time that GiftCards.com has been compromised.

Given the situation though, it’d be prudent to keep an eye on statements for cards used at GiftCards.com.

Are Simon Mall Online Purchases Affected?

Possibly. If you buy Visa gift cards online from Simon Mall, you’ll want to check your statements, although we haven’t seen specific reports of Simon Mall purchases being compromised.

Note that this only applies to online orders – credit cards used to buy gift cards in-store at Simon Mall locations shouldn’t have been affected whatsoever.

Are Other Purchases Processed By GiftCardMall Affected?

GiftCardMall processes online gift card orders for other companies including Kroger. There’s a difference with some of those partnerships though as the orders are placed on those sites (e.g. giftcards.kroger.com), with only the payment and order fulfillment being processed by GiftCardMall.

Similar to the GiftCards.com situation, there don’t appear to be any data points of fraudulent transactions on cards used on those sites, so it seems (for now) like only credit cards used directly at GiftCardMall.com have been affected. Again though, keep an eye on cards used for online gift card purchases at Kroger, etc. in case they’ve been affected.

Steps To Take

Something to consider with this whole situation is that if you do end up having fraudulent transactions on one or more of your cards, that could put eyes on your accounts. If you’re concerned about the possibility of a shutdown in that event, it might be worth reporting any cards used at GiftCardMall as lost and having new cards issued.

That’s a hassle if you haven’t experienced any fraud yet, but it’ll help ensure you don’t experience any fraud in the future while also helping ensure employees at your bank(s) don’t go through a long list of legitimate $1,500+ transactions at GiftCardMall and question what’s going on.

Future Updates

We’ll be keeping an eye on this situation and will provide updates if this issue becomes more widespread and/or if GiftCardMall states this has been fixed. Even if they fix their own website issue, past orders could’ve been compromised and so you could still see fraudulent charges on your cards in the future.

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