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.
 
Seems the hackers need to find ways to spend at Oz entities.
All the fraudulent transactions I have seen are via merchants in USA, not in Australia.
The one time I had a hacked card it was spent at some Thai massage place in Western Sydney.
You sure it wasn't you? Your user name checks out. 😉
 
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So with my last deck of Coles prepaid mastercard gift cards, a lot of them had fraudulent transaction attempts, but most were declined, except there was one $250 card which was drained to the last $14, and before I discovered that it was drained.

I opened a ticket on my balance now web site, on the first week of March. My ticket was marked as resolved on the last day of May. I received my replacement gift card this week. Hence the whole process took over 3 months.
 

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