Coles gift card offers

Further to earlier warnings about Apple Gift cards, a reminder that the Coles Gift Card MasterCards and Vanilla Prepaid cards are vulnerable to hacking.

I checked a card balance before throwing it away.

As you can see from the transaction list I used the full balance soon after I bought it in Nov 2025.

But there were four transaction attempts on the card between Feb and April this year.

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Wow. Is it meaningful that they show up as "Declined - Security Policy" rather than "Declined - Insufficient funds" (or some such). Presumably the transactions would have gone through if there were sufficient funds? Or declined automatically as they're OS (USA) transactions?
 
Wow. Is it meaningful that they show up as "Declined - Security Policy" rather than "Declined - Insufficient funds" (or some such). Presumably the transactions would have gone through if there were sufficient funds? Or declined automatically as they're OS (USA) transactions?
I do have cards which also show attempts from US (fraud) which were declined straight up, while the card balance was still full (not touched). So their system is starting to be able to identify these.

I am still waiting for my replacement card, which is apparently being sent. I reported it back beginning of March via MyBalanceNow web site, took them 3 months from me opening the case on web site to my case being marked as "Resolved". Resolved, but no card in the mail yet. All the e-mail are from Incomm, with e-mail signatures showing from GA / Georgia.

All my hacked cards were in perfect conditions. I have doubts if the frauds are actually being committed in Australia, or whether they are being committed directly from within the computer system used by Incomm.
 
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That's interesting @Chicken. Seems the hackers need to find ways to spend at Oz entities. The one time I had a hacked card it was spent at some Thai massage place in Western Sydney somewhere.
 
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